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Legislators Try to Stop Cuts in Medicare Spending

1 min readBy: Justin Higginbottom

A recent TaxA tax is a mandatory payment or charge collected by local, state, and national governments from individuals or businesses to cover the costs of general government services, goods, and activities. Foundation Fiscal Fact evaluating the Baucus Plan noted that:

Cuts in Medicare and other health programs ratchet up quickly in the CBO score, reaching $93 billion in 2019 alone and totaling $404 billion between FY 2010 and 2019. Assuming those Medicare cuts continue growing at the same rate after 2019, they could reach a total of $1.8 trillion over the next ten-year period, 2020-2029.

Well some in Washington are trying hard to keep those Medicare cuts from happening. Senate Democrats have introduced a bill that would give doctors a “$247 billion increase in Medicare fees over a decade” and “avert a 21 percent reduction in Medicare fees paid to doctors that is scheduled to take effect in January as well as additional cuts in future years.”

The sneaky part:

By creating a two-bill approach, Democrats intend to claim the more comprehensive health care measure meets President Barack Obama’s conditions – that it will neither add to deficits nor exceed $900 billion in costs over 10 years.

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