Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are putting American seniors at risk to help their political allies and influential government union boss donors.  

Democrats are taking seniors for granted — callously indifferent about the trust they are shredding and true damage they are causing to Medicare. Medicare premiums are going up and the Biden-Harris administration is using billions in taxpayer money to mask the spike. 

I expected this move, and while we elect a new president in under a month, their most recent misstep is an intentional one that strikes at one of the few tools seniors have to seek help understanding their Medicare benefits. It prioritizes powerful special interest donors over everyday Americans.

When seniors have a Medicare problem and need assistance, they call 1-800-MEDICARE, a hotline that is currently managed by Maximus, a major U.S. call center operator. That was, until the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — the federal agency responsible for overseeing Medicare under the Biden administration — pulled their nine-year contract just 15 months in. It’s unlikely this was performance related; the call center had a 95 percent satisfaction rate. Rather, the recompete of the contract reveals the true motivation: the administration is requiring this contractor to maintain a labor harmony agreement. 

Labor harmony agreements prohibit a union from interference with the contractor’s operations through picketing, work stoppage, or other economic interference. Public sector unions utilize these labor harmony agreements for the purpose of forcing businesses to comply with their radical demands — even if these demands interfere with a business service. This contract was already sizable, costing $6.6 billion over nine years. This decision will force unionization on contractors and disrupt call center operations for the over 35 million seniors who call the helpline for Medicare assistance each year. 

As a former employee at the Department of Health and Human Services and in the White House, I can tell you that there are exhaustive processes that go into every major contracting decision. We have these structures in place to ensure that favoritism and cronyism do not play a role in awarding contracts. The processes have been developed over years of bipartisan experience to ensure the integrity of the contract competition process. 

Contract integrity is so important that no agency has complete control of the contract competition and rewarding process and numerous process manuals, guidance documents and regulations exists to ensure that corruption, though always possible, is greatly reduced through supervision and the threat of an Inspector General investigation. 

During this process, experts analyze how one decision could affect millions of Americans, which is why it is shocking the White House would choose to willingly make a decision that puts the 67 million elderly Americans enrolled in Medicare at risk.

It’s an intentional decision. The bottom line is, in managing the Medicare program we must put seniors first, taxpayers second, and while the special interests can be heard, they cannot be allowed to drive contracting or policy decisions.

Furthermore, there is no logical reason or justification for this harmful decision to recompete. The Professional Services Council, which represents companies that often do business with CMS, pleaded with the HHS Secretary to not inject labor harmony agreements into contract requirements, writing that the inclusion of a labor harmony agreement “would likely result in requests for employment conditions that would make it difficult for any contractor to fulfill the stated performance goals” of CMS contracts. 

Translation: businesses that provide services to CMS, and in turn seniors who rely on the agency for Medicare, will not be able to properly serve Medicare recipients because of unworkable labor harmony agreements that public sector unions are likely to demand.

The requirement for labor harmony agreements by HHS call center operators is the latest example of the Biden administration putting politics over policy at the expense of Americans and allowing public sector unions to pay to play in education, government, and now with Medicare. 

It’s a dangerous precedent to set, and it’s a shame that this administration is focused on putting money, politics, and powerful influences ahead of the health and wellbeing of seniors. 

Joe Grogan is a nonresident senior scholar at the USC Schaeffer Institute and served as domestic policy adviser to President Donald Trump.