Who’s Kidding Whom on Health Care Cuts?
If you’re watching the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing with HHS Secretary Sebelius, you may notice that several Democrats have made statements talking about the “blunt, reckless” cuts proposed in the House-passed continuing resolution. It is of course quite interesting that former Chairman Waxman is criticizing a $1 billion reduction in community health center funding as reducing access – because he voted for a law that reduced Medicare spending by over $500 billion over the next decade, far above the health care spending reductions in the House-passed CR. The Medicare actuary has estimated that 15 percent of hospitals will become unprofitable within a decade – and up to 40 percent in the longer-term – thanks to the reductions in the law. The non-partisan actuary believes that “Medicare beneficiaries would almost certainly face increasingly severe problems with access to care” if the law is implemented as scheduled.”
What’s worse, the Medicare reductions in the health care law weren’t used to reduce the deficit, or make the Medicare program more sustainable, but were instead used to finance trillions in new entitlement spending. The Medicare actuary has previously noted that the Medicare spending reductions in the law “cannot be simultaneously used to finance other federal outlays and to extend the [Medicare] trust fund, despite the appearance of this result from the respective accounting conventions.”
Democrats may talk about “blunt, reckless” cuts in spending in the House-passed CR – but the reality is that Democrats themselves voted to enact spending reductions in Medicare that will have a far greater impact on beneficiary access, savings that WILL NOT be used to extend the long-term solvency of the Medicare program.