One of my readers received an email from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, created and distributed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, that sounds an awful lot like a sales pitch for Kamala Harris:
Dear [Reader name],With Open Enrollment for Medicare around the corner, I want to make sure you’re aware of historic changes to Medicare that are lowering health care costs and ensuring that every American has the peace of mind that comes with quality, affordable health care.Because Medicare benefits are getting stronger, it is more important than ever to look at your drug coverage for 2025 during Medicare Open Enrollment and make sure you are enrolled in the Medicare Part D plan that is best for you. You can learn more about these benefits and review your options at Medicare.gov starting in early October. Medicare Open Enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th.These historic reforms are a result of the Inflation Reduction Act that I signed into law and that Vice President Harris cast the tie-breaking vote to secure. This new law gives Medicare the power to negotiate lower prescription drug prices, like the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs does on behalf of our nation’s veterans and servicemembers.Medicare has been able to cap the cost of insulin for seniors with diabetes at $35 a month for each covered insulin instead of as much as $400 a month. Recommended vaccines, like those to treat shingles, are free for people with Medicare prescription drug coverage.Starting in January 2025, your total out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs will be capped at $2,000 a year, no matter how expensive your prescription drugs are. That means you will not pay more than $2,000 per year on prescription drugs covered under Medicare prescription drug coverage, or Part D — that includes expensive prescription drugs to treat cancer, chronic illnesses, and more.And if you have had high drug costs in 2024 and have reached what’s called the catastrophic coverage phase, you won’t have to pay any more out of pocket.These reforms not only save seniors money, they also save money for American taxpayers. In fact, taxpayers are expected to save $160 billion over the next decade because Medicare is now able to negotiate drug prices alongside other reforms — and we’re just getting started.In addition to these cost-saving benefits that are in effect in 2025, Medicare recently announced that it has reached agreement with pharmaceutical companies for new, lower prices for ten of the most expensive and most frequently used prescription drugs in Medicare. These new, lower prices will go into effect in 2026, and Medicare will continue to negotiate prices for additional drugs each year for the foreseeable future.These are just some of the ways my Administration has worked to help you save money on your health care costs and to provide a little more breathing room for you and your families.Vice President Harris and I believe that health care should be a right, not a privilege. I encourage you to take advantage of these new, lower-cost benefits as part of stronger, better Medicare coverage that you deserve.Joe Biden
Your tax dollars paid for that email, allegedly from President Biden, touting Harris’s vote; more than 66 million Americans get their health coverage from Medicare.
Now, the letter doesn’t come out and explicitly say “vote for Kamala Harris,” but it goes right up to the line. Everyone more or less ignores the Hatch Act these days, but that law “limits certain political activity of federal employees while they are on duty, in the federal workplace, or acting in their official capacity. Political activity is activity directed toward the success or failure of a partisan candidate, political party, or partisan political group.” The Hatch Act states that an executive branch employee cannot use his or her “official authority or influence to interfere with or affect the result of an election.” And yet, by touting Harris’s vote to break the tie to pass the Inflation Reduction Act — irrelevant to Medicare Part D plans — in its official communications, roughly a month before Election Day, that’s exactly what officials at the Department of Health and Human Services did.
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