New Bush Budget Calls for More Medicare, Medicaid Cuts

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Sat, 4 Mar 2006 16:04:12 -0500

New Bush Budget Calls for More Medicare,

Medicaid Cuts

 

 

 

 

> New Bush Budget Calls for More Medicare, Medicaid Cuts

>

> ElderLaw

>

 

> President Bush's proposed $2.77 trillion budget for fiscal year 2007

calls for substantial cuts in domestic programs, especially Medicare, while

increasing spending on the military and domestic security and making his tax

cuts permanent.

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> Coming on the heels of nearly $40 billion in cuts to Medicaid and

Medicare, the proposals face tough prospects on Capitol Hill and are

putting many Republican lawmakers in a tight spot during an election year.

>

> " It strikes me that [the White House] isn't thinking about the

election at all, " one Republican Senate aide told the newspaper Roll Call. " I

can't quite figure out why they are going to make us jump off this cliff. "

>

> The biggest spending reductions are to the Medicare program, which would be

cut by $36 billion over five years and $105 billion over 10 years.

Hospitals, nursing homes and home health care agencies would receive

billions of dollars less in reimbursements. The budget would also increase

Medicare premiums for seniors with higher incomes and institute a requirement

that oxygen equipment be purchased rather than leased.

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> The president is also calling for another round of cuts to the Medicaid

program, including a $12 billion reduction in Medicaid payments to states that

Congress rejected last year.

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> Meanwhile, the budget offers $60 billion in tax breaks to encourage the use of

health savings accounts (HSAs), which theoretically prompt patients to become

more prudent consumers of health care services because they are playing with

their own money. But these accounts are mainly available to more well-off

consumers who have the resources to establish them in the first place. Some

observers view Bush's HSA proposals as the health care equivalent of last year's

doomed effort to promote private Social Security accounts.

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> (The budget includes a little-noticed provision for a new Social

Security privatization plan that would divert more than $700 billion of Social

Security tax revenues to pay for private accounts over seven years.)

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> The Bush budget would reduce or eliminate 141 other programs. It would:

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> terminate a program that provides poor seniors with nutritious foods

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> end the $255 Social Security death benefit to the surviving spouse of a

beneficiary

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> eliminate Social Security survivor payments for 16- and 17-year-old high

school dropouts

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> scale back programs that help the poor insulate their homes

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> impose higher drug copayments and fees on veterans with higher

incomes or less-severe disabilities

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> cut the National Cancer Institute's budget by $40 million

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> cut the budget of the Centers for Disease Control by $179 million

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> At the same time, the budget proposal calls for the President's tax cuts to

become permanent, a move that would reduce projected federal

revenues by $1.35 trillion over the next decade.

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> The budget got a largely cool reception on Capitol Hill, even among

members of the President's own party.

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> Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) called the proposed cuts in education and

health " scandalous, " while Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) said she was

" disappointed and even surprised " by the extent of the suggested cuts to

Medicaid and Medicare.

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> Rep. John Spratt (D-SC), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget

Committee, said, " A budget is a statement of moral choices, and this

budget makes the wrong choices. "

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> © 2006 ElderLawNet, Inc.

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