To the Editor:

Some North Country residents received a scary mailing about Medicare Part D, financed by an obscure “Seniors for Better Health,” claiming passage of HR 4895 would “force as many as 2 million seniors off their Part D plan” and lead to “Part D premiums rising by 50%.”

These claims, supposedly backed by “numerous (unnamed) studies,” are footnoted, sort of. One citation, “KFF, Medicare Part D in 2024, 11/8/24,” is elusive; a search at KFF.org, netted nothing relevant. Another citation: (unnamed) “Managed Healthcare Executive, 3/19/24.”  Any junior high student should recognize inadequate sources.

This is not misinformation; it’s intentionally misleading disinformation.

HR 4895, named the “Lowering Drug Costs for American Families Act,” is intended to expand Medicare’s new ability to negotiate better drug prices that seniors will begin seeing in 2026 to hard-working Americans on private plans, benefiting an additional 164 million Americans and their families on employer-based plans and 16 million Americans with Marketplace coverage.  

“Big Pharma” lobbied for years to prevent Medicare from negotiating lower drug prices until the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) enabled it. They fear the expansion to private plans for obvious reasons: Americans might stop paying 2.78 times more for drugs than 33 other countries.  (2024 Rand study)

HR 4895 also adopts the IRA’s provision that penalizes drug companies from raising prices faster than inflation.

Lower drug prices for others forces seniors out of their Part D plan? Ridiculous!  

A 50% rise in Part D premiums? According to a 1/24/24  HealthWell Foundation article, “the Inflation Reduction Act has a Part D premium stabilization provision starting in 2024, through which the Medicare Part D base beneficiary premium is capped at a 6% annual growth rate.”

Seniors4BetterCare.com sounds like “grassroot grandparents.” The site has no “About Us;” one must open the “privacy policy” to discover its American Prosperity Alliance, a dark money group formed in 2022 to fight the IRA, according to Open Secrets, and whose Articles of Incorporation state “2. The Corporation shall have no members,” but has a “sole incorporator,” a corporate tax lawyer named Tom Antonucci. No seniors?

How much did it cost to spread this disinformation across the nation? It wasn’t from a bunch of “grassroot grandparents,” but rather the wealthy again protecting profits at the expense of Americans who continue to pay some of the highest drug prices in the world.

Vote blue in November.

Mike Zagrobelny, Chair, St. Lawrence County Democrats
Ginger Storey-Welch, Vice-Chair, St. Lawrence County Democrats