Record-high Medicare premium increase unrelated to growing inflation, report says

Despite the country’s decades-high 6.2 percent inflation rate in October, a Nov. 24 report from PolitiFact and Kaiser Health News found it did not influence Medicare’s 2022 premium hikes. 

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Claims that the record-high inflation was tied to 2022’s record-high Medicare premium increase appeared in a news release from Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla. 

The co-authored piece pointed to a CMS report that cites growing healthcare costs, a pandemic-era premium management move from Congress and a potential surge in drug costs as rationale for the premium increase. Inflation has little-to-no impact on Medicare costs, according to Kaiser Health News

Paul Ginsburg, health policy professor at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at the University of Southern California, told Kaiser Health News that the claim of inflation affecting Medicare “is so false that it is annoying,” adding that the impact on premiums “is zero because Medicare controls prices.”

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