By now, no doubt, you've heard the outcry from the Democrats and the media about how President Trump's new budget cuts Medicare by over 800 billion dollars over the next ten years. But here are three things that you haven't heard. As Al Gore might call them, they are the inconvenient truth:
1. Medicare benefits will not be reduced by even one cent under the Trump proposal. All that is affected is reimbursements for providers.
2. There are no cuts of any sort. All that the President proposes is to slow the growth in expenditures.
3. The changes that Trump proposes are both necessary and beneficial to the program. Let me give you an example. The biggest single change is a rule that would provide that payments to doctors for services will be at the same rate whether they pertain to an office visit or one in a hospital. In other words, when the neurologist checks out a patient in the hospital or in the doctor's office, the payment by Medicare will be the same. This rule is necessary because many hospitals are buying up medical practices in order to get the benefit of the current higher rates for office visits. (Every doctor that I see in my town is now part of a practice owned by the Yale hospital system.) The hospitals are gaming the system, and it has to stop. This change alone will save Medicare about a quarter of a trillion dollars over ten years.
1. Medicare benefits will not be reduced by even one cent under the Trump proposal. All that is affected is reimbursements for providers.
2. There are no cuts of any sort. All that the President proposes is to slow the growth in expenditures.
3. The changes that Trump proposes are both necessary and beneficial to the program. Let me give you an example. The biggest single change is a rule that would provide that payments to doctors for services will be at the same rate whether they pertain to an office visit or one in a hospital. In other words, when the neurologist checks out a patient in the hospital or in the doctor's office, the payment by Medicare will be the same. This rule is necessary because many hospitals are buying up medical practices in order to get the benefit of the current higher rates for office visits. (Every doctor that I see in my town is now part of a practice owned by the Yale hospital system.) The hospitals are gaming the system, and it has to stop. This change alone will save Medicare about a quarter of a trillion dollars over ten years.
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