From NPR:

aving failed to convince Congress to overhaul Social Security last year, President Bush in his budget for fiscal 2007 is taking on an even more politically difficult task — slowing the growth in Medicare.

The administration’s budget actually proposes cuts to a wide variety of health programs, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and aid to children’s hospitals. It would freeze funding for many more, including the National Institutes of Health.

But the biggest money — and the biggest controversy — will surround efforts to reduce spending on Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly and disabled. The budget would reduce Medicare spending by just short of $36 billion over the next five years. But at the briefing to unveil his department’s budget, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said the cuts won’t even make that much of a dent in Medicare’s long-term financing shortfall. “They will amount to reducing our growth rate by less than 1.5 percent. Under the current pattern, we would see spending at 8.1 percent over the next five years. Under this proposal, it would fall to 7.7 percent. Medicare will continue to grow, but at a slower rate,” he said.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2006 at 4:30 pm and is filed under Medicare News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.