Trump offering $90 to Medicare enrollees to cover premiums

The Trump administration will soon start paying $90 each to more than 20M Medicare enrollees to help them pay for their Part B premiums, marking the latest financial incentive offered by the White House ahead of the midterm elections.

The one-time payments are expected to reach eligible Medicare enrollees in the form of a direct deposit or a check in early October, according to a White House fact sheet on Friday.

However, of the roughly 64M participants in the government-backed healthcare program, some enrollees, including recipients of Medicaid for premium payments, will not be eligible for the one-time payments.

The funds will be utilized from the Medicare Improvement Fund, which Congress established in 2008 with $2.2B to improve the Medicare fee-for-service program.

In a social media post announcing the payments, Trump identified the fund as “a pointless 'Slush Fund'" that Democrats created to "pay for the Waste, Fraud, and Abuse for their Special Interest friends, and drive up Healthcare costs.”

Medicare Part B covers doctor visits, treatments administered in doctors' offices, and preventative tests. The payments will be separate from the $500 checks the administration began sending to nearly 1M Americans enrolled in Affordable Care Act plans last Thursday, Trump said.

Leading health insurers: UnitedHealth (UNH), Humana (HUM), Cigna (CI), CVS Health (CVS), Clover Health (CLOV), Alignment Healthcare (ALHC), Oscar Health (OSCR), Centene (CNC), Molina Health (MOH), and Elevance Health (ELV).

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