Outcry Over Trump’s Cuts To Medicare Hospital Payments

WASHINGTON - As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump promised not to cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. Once in the White House, Trump reneged on his Medicaid promise, and now he's being criticized for proposing steep Medicare payment cuts in his new budget.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the budget embodies long-standing Republican ambitions "to make Medicare wither on the vine."

"After exploding the deficit with his GOP tax scam for the rich, President Trump is once again trying to ransack Medicare, Medicaid and the health care of seniors and families across America," Pelosi said in a statement.

The budget calls for $845 billion in total, or gross, spending reductions to Medicare over 10 years, mainly by cutting future payments to hospitals and other service providers.

However, that eye-popping figure appears to involve some budgetary legerdemain. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found actual savings of $515 billion or $575 billion, depending on how those savings are calculated.

Medicare now costs about $650 billion a year, and that's expected to rise sharply as the baby boom generation goes into retirement. The White House says the budget doesn't reflect benefit cuts to seniors but makes better use of taxpayers' dollars and reduces spending by cutting prescription drug costs.

"He's not cutting Medicare in this budget," acting White House budget director Russell Vought told reporters on Monday. "What we are doing is putting forward reforms that lower drug prices, (and) that because Medicare pays a very large share of drug prices in this country, it has the impact of finding savings.

"We're also finding waste, fraud, and abuse," Vought added. "Medicare spending will go up every single year by healthy margins, and there are no structural changes for Medicare beneficiaries."

But the head of a major hospital association was pushing back, saying in a blog that "arbitrary and blunt" Medicare cuts would have a "devastating" impact on care for seniors.

"Hospitals are less and less able to cover the cost of care for Medicare patients; it is no time to gut Medicare," said Chip Kahn of the Federation of American Hospitals.