Trump thinks a $90 payment to Medicare recipients will buy their vote

An AFP reader noticed an unexpected $90 deposit had been made to his bank account on Monday, supposedly from the U.S. Treasury, and worried that someone had hacked the account.

Unrelated, the reader got a call back minutes later related to a question that he had related to a dispute over a bill for a minor procedure that Medicare had said it wasn’t going to pay.

After the Medicaid employee had dealt with the billing issue, she asked our reader to stay on the line, so that she could read a statement.

“From the generosity of President Donald J. Trump,” the reader recalled the prepared statement beginning.

By the end, he had his answer on the unexpected $90 bank deposit from the U.S. Treasury.

News reports have it that Trump had promised, last week, that his administration would “begin sending ‘Checks’ of nearly $100 to over 20 MILLION wonderful Seniors to help pay for their Medicare Part B premiums.”

That’s a direct quote from a Truth Social post from Trump dated Oct. 2, timestamped 10:56 p.m.

There’s your president, folks, doing policy on social media around 11 p.m. on a Friday night, before hatewatching Bill Maher.

The money is coming from the Medicare Improvement Fund, which was created in 2008 to provide funding to improve program operations and dole out payments to healthcare providers.

The cost of the one-time $90 deposits to the 20.8 million seniors enrolled in Medicare Part B: $1.9 billion.

KFF reports that the $90 deposits will almost entirely deplete the Medicare Improvement Fund.

Ah, well, that’s a small price for the taxpayers to pay for Trump to try to buy the votes of seniors.

Trump characterized the Medicare Improvement Fund, in his late-night post rant, as a “pointless ‘Slush Fund’ that has only been used by Dumocrats in Congress to pay for the Waste, Fraud, and Abuse for their Special Interest friends, and drive up Healthcare costs.”

Point of fact: per the reporting from KFF, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which administers the fund, “has never used the money.”

“We are finally using this Fund, along with my Most Favored Nations Deals, to substantially LOWER costs for our Seniors,” Trump wrote.

“Substantially,” huh?

The standard Medicare Part B monthly premium, per Medicare.gov, is $202.90.

Doing the math, that $90 one-time deposit doesn’t pay half of one month’s premium.

As our reader told us, “$90 is $90.”

“Everybody has a price,” the reader said in a phone call. “Mine just happens to be a lot higher than $90.”