Medicaid

In June 2009, President Obama said, “Medicare and Medicaid are the single biggest drivers of the federal deficit and the federal debt by a huge margin.” Two years later, Paul Ryan and the House Republicans have advanced a serious proposal to deal with these two biggest drivers of our debt.

When President Obama tours the country and touts Obamacare, one thing you never hear him highlight is that half of Obamacare’s projected decrease in the number of uninsured comes from people who would simply be dumped into Medicaid at taxpayer expense.

In proposing to cut another $400 billion from U.S. defense budgets over the next ten years as part of his deficit reduction counter-offer, Barack Obama’s words were few. Yet they were revealing.

If there is one thing that political strategists, pollsters, and elected officials of both parties have agreed on for decades, it’s that entitlement reform is a sure political loser. Social Security is the “third rail”—touch it and you die. Suggest changes to Medicaid and you don’t care about the poor. Propose modest reforms to Medicare and you’re the target of a well-funded “Mediscare” campaign that ensures your defeat.

Social Security’s looming deficit can be handled, for the time being, by adjusting benefits a tad downward. Medicaid’s runaway spending can be restrained by giving state governors more flexibility in administering the program. These are modest solutions. Medicare is different. It needs a big solution.

President Obama’s average annual deficit spending (including his proposed deficit spending for 2012) has been 9.7 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) — more than double the tally of any other president since World War II.  In the wake of Obama’s spending spree, it’s therefore a bit disconcerting that the CBO writes in a newly issued report that “the continued aging of the population and growth in health care costs will almost certainly push up federal spending significantly relative to GDP.”

According to Politico, President Obama will be forced to abandon his controversial nomination of Donald Berwick as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Politico reports that “Senate Democrats have given up on confirming Don Berwick as CMS administrator in the wake of a letter from 42 Republican senators opposing the nomination,” as “there's no way for Berwick to get the 60 votes needed to clear the Senate.”

After watching the State of the Union address, we’ve finally figured out which position President Obama could play for the Steelers on Super Bowl Sunday. He’d make a great punter.

The Associated Press reports:  

Two of the central promises of President Barack Obama's health care overhaul law are unlikely to be fulfilled, Medicare's independent economic expert told Congress on Wednesday.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a 347-page, 118,072-word Obamacare "rule" released by Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius and unconfirmed-Medicare Administrator Donald Berwick, two people whose power would increase immensely under Obamacare.

Today's Wall Street Journal reports: