President Obama said he is willing to make cuts to Medicare but only if there are tax hikes for the super wealthy and will veto any bill that slashes entitlements and fails to raise taxes, he announced in his deficit reduction speech Sept. 19 from the White House’s Rose Garden.
The speech was an effort to lay the framework for the recently established super-committee in charge of trimming over a trillion dollars from the federal deficit in the next decade who began talks in early September.
“Either we ask seniors to pay more for Medicare, or we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes; we can’t do both,” Obama said.
Obama’s plan includes $248 billion in savings from Medicare most of which will come from reducing overpayments, according to the White House fact sheet on the plan. Changes to beneficiaries won’t take effect until 2017 and the eligibility age will not change.
Additionally, repealing the sustainable growth rate formula must be a part of deficit reduction, Obama said. Proposals to alter Medicare are made as so to prevent the 30% cut to physician rates as part of the SGR, according to the President’s deficit reduction plan. “Failing to do so simply masks the worsening long-run deficit,” the report says.
“The AMA commends the President for recognizing that any serious plan to address the deficit must include a repeal of the Medicare sustainable growth rate formula,” said AMA president Peter Carmel, MD in a news release. “Honest accounting of our nation's debt should not assume $300 billion in Medicare physician cuts, which Congress has rejected repeatedly because of the significant, detrimental impact those cuts would have on patients’ access to care.”