President’s Budget Seeks Compromise at Too Great a Cost for People with Medicare

This week, President Obama released his fiscal year 2014 budget, which aims to reduce the nation’s deficit through revenue increases and targeted spending cuts. Additionally, the budget includes some provisions for sustaining Medicare, including eliminating wasteful spending in the program and building on new, efficient program innovations made possible by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The President’s budget tackles Medicare’s drug costs by accelerating the closure of the Part D coverage gap (or doughnut hole) and restoring drug rebates in the Medicare program for people with low incomes.
However, the President’s budget also includes proposals that would increase costs for Medicare beneficiaries. These proposals would increase premiums for middle-income beneficiaries, tax Medigap plans, and increase beneficiaries’ deductibles and copays. The President also proposed cuts to Social Security’s cost of living adjustments, which would make it more difficult for beneficiaries on limited incomes to afford their health care—half of the Medicare population currently lives on annual incomes of $22,500 or less.

Cutting federal spending by shifting costs to older adults and people with disabilities is no way to balance the budget and fails to address the real problem—rising health care costs in the system overall. The proposals included in the President’s budget aim for compromise, but that compromise would come at too great a cost for Medicare beneficiaries.

Read Medicare Rights’ Press Release.