Gang of Six Members Were Willing to Cut $400 Billion from MedicareBy: David Dayen - FDL
Wednesday May 18, 2011 1:36 pm
<snip>
Greg Sargent has more of the story about Tom Coburn’s unceremonious exit from the Gang of Six. We pretty much knew it had to do with Coburn seeking a global spending cap for Medicare. We didn’t know the details:
The “Gang of Six” talks on deficit reduction broke down after Senators Dick Durbin and Tom Coburn got locked in a heated yelling match over Coburn’s demand for extremely deep cuts in Medicare that Durbin thought would “destroy” the popular program, a Senate aide familiar with the talks tells me.
According to the aide familiar with the talks, the senators got into a heated argument on Monday night, after Coburn demanded an additional $130 billion in Medicare, in addition to the $400 billion in Medicare cuts recommended by President Obama’s fiscal commission, for a total of $530 billion in cuts for current recipients.
“Coburn came in on Monday and said, ‘I want $130 billion,’” the aide says. “The conservation was heated. There was yelling. Durbin said, ‘I am not doing this. That destroys Medicare. That goes even further than Paul Ryan. We’re not doing it.’”
I don’t know who this narrator is and what his or her motivations are. It’s a Durbin staffer for all I know. But we do know a few things from this:
1) They were using the Bowles-Simpson cat food recommendations for Medicare, which would have cut $400 billion from the program over a decade. That’s on top of the $500 billion in cuts, mainly from ending Medicare Advantage overpayments, in the Affordable Care Act. So what were those cuts? Here was the main briefing document from Bowles-Simpson. It includes:
Pay doctors and other providers less, improve efficiency, and reward quality by speeding up payment reforms and increasing drug rebates
Pay lawyers less and reduce the cost of defensive medicine by adopting comprehensive tort reform
Expand cost-sharing in Medicare to promote informed consumer health choices and spending
Expand successful cost containment demonstrations
Strengthen IPAB
Recommend additional health savings (illustrative examples to follow)
And...
So while the Gang of Six has basically been cashed, we can learn from this experience what Democrats were willing to give up, and what they weren’t. It’s not the prettiest of pictures.<snip>
Link:
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/05/18/gang-of-six-members-were-willing-to-cut-400-billion-from-medicare/:kick:
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