The Trump administration just canceled a Biden-era insurer bailout that cost taxpayers $40 billion in two years — and the left is lying about it.
California Democrats claimed on X that Trump is “ending Medicare Part D” and putting 25 million seniors’ health on the line. That’s completely false.
Trump isn’t ending the Medicare Part D prescription drug program Congress created in 2003. He’s ending an illegal bailout the Biden administration invented in summer 2024 to hide the true cost of Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act.
Here’s what really happened.
The Biden administration announced a unilateral “premium stabilization demonstration” in summer 2024 — just in time for premium notices to land in seniors’ mailboxes before the November 2024 election. The timing wasn’t a coincidence.
Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act restructured Part D costs and reduced seniors’ out-of-pocket expenses on prescriptions. That sounds good until you realize it means seniors consume more expensive drugs when they don’t pay for them — driving total spending through the roof.
The IRA already included one bailout mechanism running through 2029. But after seeing preliminary insurer bids for 2025, the Biden administration realized that wouldn’t be enough to stop massive premium spikes or insurers fleeing the program entirely.
“These subsidies have helped keep premiums down but simply by shifting more of the cost on to the federal government.”
So Biden’s team conjured a second bailout — using taxpayer dollars to save Kamala Harris from a political disaster days before the election.
The bailouts shifted costs off seniors and onto taxpayers. Seniors traditionally paid 25.5 percent of Part D benefit costs via premiums. This year they’re paying only 13 percent. Taxpayers foot the bill for roughly seven in eight dollars of program spending.
The cost explosion is staggering. The IRA bailouts burned through $40 billion in additional taxpayer money in 2025 and 2026 alone — and the costs keep climbing.
This year’s Medicare trustees report increased the long-term cost of Part D by roughly one-third — a $5 trillion increase compared to the 2025 report.
That’s unsustainable. And Trump knows it.
The Trump administration is ending Biden’s unilateral bailout because insurers now have enough claims data from the IRA’s January 2025 rollout to price their products accurately. The uncertainty is gone.
Eliminating one bailout — the statutory bailout remains through 2029 — may slightly increase some Part D premiums. But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services noted that the majority of enrollees will either face no change or a decline in premiums, or an increase under $10 per month.
Taxpayers will still pay a greater share of Part D costs than before the IRA. And premiums have fallen by more than one-third in inflation-adjusted terms over the past 15 years. Part D remains a strong value for seniors.
By ending Biden’s illegal insurer bailout, Trump restored fiscal sanity to a program bleeding taxpayer dollars — and helped preserve Medicare, which faces major solvency concerns down the road.
Democrats lied. Trump protected taxpayers. And seniors still get their prescriptions.
25 million people, mainly seniors, count on Medicare Part D to afford their prescriptions. Donald Trump is putting their health on the line by ending the program. pic.twitter.com/FCYX4I0Myg
— California Democratic Party (@CA_Dem) July 29, 2026
