On September 24, Trump surprised virtually everyone by promising America's seniors a, one time, $200 prescription drug card. His announcement caught folks at Health and Human Services and Medicare by surprise. Now, those people are trying to implement the plan so that seniors on Medicare drug plans will receive their card, with a signed Trump letter, before the election. Of course, this $200 is not a gift, it is money taken directly out of the Medicare trust fund, but the cost of producing and distributing these cards will also come out of the trust fund. So, Medicare will be forced to take money out of its trust fund to cover the cost of these cards randomly sent out, often to people who don't need them, leaving less in the already stressed Medicare trust fund.
The funding is going to come from the Medicare trust fund, and it's not cheap. It will cost $7.9 billion, including about $51 million to create and distribute the cards. That's taxpayer money that is supposed to be paying benefits for seniors, not on Trump's campaign. On top of that $7.9 billion, the administration is proposing spending $19 million this month, to send letters out to seniors hyping the plan. That's possibly because they aren't certain they could have the cards land in seniors' mailboxes before the election, so they want to make sure a letter signed by Trump reaches them before they vote. Just to be clear, this is the administration taking money away from seniors' Medicare to give it back to them, with some extra fees and costs tacked on for the cost of mailing and production. It's a boondoggle. It's worse.
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