Trump's promised drug discount cards for seniors have become a 'last-minute, thrown-together' fiasco

President Trump's Election Day promise to seniors is reportedly not working out.

In late September, Trump made a surprise announcement he'd be sending $200 drug discount cards to Medicare recipients with a goal of getting them distributed by Election Day. Health and Human Services Department officials were surprised too, and have since been "scrambling" to get the plan off the ground ever since, Politico reports.

The Trump administration reportedly wants the plan finalized by Friday and to send letters telling 39 million Medicare beneficiaries about the promotion by next week, Politico reports. One health official said they didn't know about the plan "until the public found out too," and another HHS official said "it's turning into this last-minute, thrown-together thing."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The letters, sent at an estimated cost of $19 million, will apparently tell seniors how the plan will help lower drug costs and may bear Trump's name. But Stacie Dusetzina, a Vanderbilt University professor who reviewed the draft proposal, said the cards are a "poorly designed experiment" if cutting drug prices is the goal. Altogether, the program will end up taking $8 billion from the Medicare trust fund, which is set to run dry by 2026. And since the Medicare trust fund is paid for by taxes and Medicare premiums, the cards could end up "returning patients' premium payments to them, in effect," said Rachel Sachs, a professor at the Washington University School of Law.

Instead of an innovative approach to drug pricing, one HHS official sees "a solution in search of a problem and a bald play for votes in the form of money in pockets," they told Politico. And while the letters about the cards may be out the door next week, the actual discounts may not be in seniors' hands until well after the election. Read more at Politico.