Politicians projecting an image of themselves that’s not entirely accurate is nothing new. Try as she does with her always-on media presence, Minnesota U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is apparently no different. This seems especially true when it comes to health care programs older Minnesotans rely on and reigning in large integrated corporations. This seems doubly evident when it comes to how President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act relates to the business practices of Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group.
Sen. Klobuchar misses few opportunities to tout her support, if not ownership, of the federal spending bill’s changes to Medicare. She and other progressives in Washington, D.C., promised it would drive down consumer prices and lower drug costs for seniors in Medicare. Despite such statements, it hasn’t worked out that way.
Not at all, actually. A full year after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act,
polling
by the D.C. nonprofit
American Commitment
showed nearly 85% of older Americans said prices for goods and services had gone up, not down. Less than 11% said the costs of their prescription drugs had decreased. All told, nearly 80% viewed the costly legislation as a “failure.” Just ask older Minnesotans if their drug costs have gone up or down. Then ask the same about their Medicare premiums and out-of-pocket expenses. What they’re seeing with their own eyes does not comport with what Biden and Klobuchar are trying to sell us.
Klobuchar also fails to stress what few seniors probably know, that buried in the bill’s small print were provisions to immediately
divert more than $250 billion
in projected Medicare drug savings to other spending measures. This included billions in large subsidies paid to big insurers, tax credits for electric-vehicle buyers, and other questionable handouts unrelated to the Medicare program — largely doled out before the ink was dry.
Big insurers will also benefit from new government price controls that lower the costs of medicines they have to cover. Meanwhile, most of the drug pricing “savings” provisions sold to seniors had delayed, years-long implementation schedules.
Making matters worse, since passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, older Americans in Medicare Advantage have been socked with skyrocketing premiums and out-of-pocket costs imposed by big insurers and their pharmacy benefit manager middlemen. Then add
recent drug shortages
and warnings of new potential patient access restrictions — and
allegations of insurers overcharging Medicare billions
and
using AI to deny patients
care — and it seems clear our health care problems are likely getting worse.
Yet, even as these troubling issues and critical accountability measures have emerged, including bipartisan reforms to prevent big insurers and pharmacy benefit managers from pocketing massive drug-price rebates rather than passing them on to patients, Klobuchar has been largely AWOL. The same goes for conducting oversight on the handful of giant integrated health care conglomerates, including UHG, that control so much of the system. The latter is especially noteworthy considering she chairs the powerful Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee and is in a great position to do so.
Nowhere has there been more consolidation than in the health care industry, a massive sector of our economy that impacts nearly every citizen and consumer, young and old. Through acquisitions and a little help from government entitlement programs like Medicare and Obamacare, UHG has grown to be one of the biggest corporations in the world. In addition to being the biggest provider of Medicare Advantage plans,
it also owns
some of America’s largest pharmacy benefit managers, pharmacies, surgical centers, physician practices, surgical centers, and large home health companies, earning it north of $370 billion last year.
Additionally, UHG maintains a financial partnership with the supposed seniors’ advocate AARP, one that has now paid the organization over
$8 billion
in royalties and fees. The AARP, too, is notably quiet in calling for reforms for big insurers and pharmacy benefit managers.
Much of this came into play just a few weeks ago in Washington when Congress examined the far-reaching structure and practices of UHG in relation to the systemic cyberattack on health IT giant Change Healthcare. Even as Democrats, Republicans, the
U.S. Department of Justice
, and other agencies busily call out the potential threats such integrated health cartels pose, Klobuchar, along with the well-funded AARP, remain curiously inactive.
While some might not fault Klobuchar for having loyalty to the president or a large home-state employer, the glaring discrepancies between what she says, what she does, and what she seems to willfully ignore — when two of her supposedly signature reform issues collide — are cause for great concern. Older Minnesotans now expect visible action, and Sen. Klobuchar owes them no less.
Bob Johnson of The Villages, Florida, is a retired Minnesota trade association executive and the former president of the
Insurance Federation of Minnesota
(insurancefederation.org). He serves as an advisor to
Commitment to Seniors
(commitmenttoseniors.org), a project of
American Commitment
(americancommitment.org), a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., that’s critical of AARP.
