The federal government is days away from a shutdown if Congress can’t agree on a 2012 budget. And one of the proposals puts Medicare on the chopping block.
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) furnished a budget Tuesday that would save the government over $4 trillion over the next 10 years, CBS News
reports.
Combined with the $725 billion budget cut by repealing the health care bill, Ryan, who is also the GOP budget chairman, proposed that the current Medicare program be dissolved and reformed such that monies would be funneled directly to private insurance companies as a way to drive down costs through competition.
The proposed
budget also stated that Medicare beneficiaries age 55 and over would not be affected.