By law, if more than 45 percent of Medicare spending is projected to come from general revenues (as opposed to dedicated revenues such as payroll taxes and beneficiary premiums), then President Obama is legally required to send a legislative proposal to Congress addressing Medicare’s looming insolvency within 15 days of presenting his budget.
For four straight years, this ‘Medicare trigger’ has been reached. And for four straight years, Obama has failed to submit a plan addressing our imminent Medicare crisis. Today, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., sent a letter to Obama demanding to know where his Medicare plan is. The letter reads in part:
The President’s unserious approach to Medicare will have serious consequences for seniors. President Obama continues to ignore his legal and moral obligations to protect the health security of America’s seniors. While he refuses to advance credible solutions to strengthen Medicare, the President’s health-care law does great harm to this critical program – raiding Medicare by over $500 billion to fund a new open-ended entitlement, while leaving the fate of seniors’ care to a board of 15 unelected bureaucrats in Washington. There is a growing bipartisan consensus on how best to preserve the Medicare guarantee, but the President won’t join this discussion. The President is required by law to respond to the Medicare Trustees’ annual warning, and – as a matter of fundamental leadership – is duty-bound to do so.
Meanwhile, the Democratic leaders in the Senate refuse to bring a budget plan to the floor for the third straight year. The livelihoods, savings and futures of millions of hardworking Americans are at stake, but the President and his party’s leaders can’t even be bothered to fulfill their most basic obligations in a time of crisis.
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), if Medicare stays on its current course, 25% of all hospitals will be bankrupt by 2030:
Similarly, Dr. Joseph Newhouse wrote in an article for Health Affairs, “it is equally hard to imagine cutting only Medicare spending while spending by the commercially insured under age sixty-five continues to grow at historic rates, which would lead to a marked divergence between what providers are paid for treating the commercially insured relative to what they are paid for Medicare beneficiaries. This gap could jeopardize Medicare beneficiaries’ access to mainstream medical care.”
