Former President Donald Trump speaks during a “Get Out The Vote” rally at the Forum River Center in … [+]
When former President Trump proposed possible cuts to Medicare during an interview with CNBC today should come as no surprise. While Trump has promised repeatedly during the 2016, 2020 and 2024 election cycles not to cut Medicare, his actual record belies the rhetoric. However, most of the cuts Trump has proposed or talked about are related to reduced payments to health care providers and hospitals, not benefits to Medicare recipients.
Yesterday, in an interview with CNBC, Trump said there’s “a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, the cut.” Trump did not elaborate.
While on the campaign trail in New Hampshire on Monday, President Biden was quick to capitalize on the former President’s comments, saying that “Donald Trump said cuts to Social Security and Medicare are back on the table. I will never allow this to happen. I’m not going to cut Social Security, I’m not going to cut Medicare. Not on my watch.”
Later in the day, Trump’s campaign sought to clarify the remarks, saying the former president only meant “cutting waste and fraud.”
There is some support for the waste and fraud that is central to Trump’s political agenda. In a video Posted last year, Trump was adamant: “Reduce waste, fraud and abuse everywhere we can find it and there’s a lot of it, there’s a lot of it. But don’t cut the benefits our seniors have worked and paid for all their lives.”
However, what Trump has done as President in terms of budget proposals has gone far beyond waste and fraud. Trump has proposed major spending cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in each of his budgets as President. Washington Post mentionted earlier this year.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the latest budget submitted by the Trump administration in February 2020—the budget 2021—included about $500 billion in net reductions in Medicare spending over ten years, most of which would come from reduced payments to hospitals and health care providers. While the cuts would not have directly affected Medicare beneficiaries, stricter eligibility rules for long-term care services would have limited access, saving $34 billion but putting care out of reach for some.
Trump’s 2020 budget unveiled in 2019 went deeper. According Voicethe Administration proposed a reduction 575 billion dollars of projected Medicare spending over ten years. Part of the reduction in spending will come from cost savings as a result of lower prescription drug prices.
For Medicare providers and beneficiaries perhaps the most damaging part of this budget would be the proposed cut of about $100 billion over ten years from payments to nursing homes and home health services that care for Medicare patients who have been discharged from the hospital .
In addition, the Trump administration’s budgets would affect some who were eligible for Medicare and Medicaid due to cuts to Medicaid, such as adding work requirements, eliminating the Medicaid expansion, and replacing the funding system with block grants in which states would receive a maximum limit- amount payment.
And among the policy proposals that would have an immediate impact on Medicare beneficiaries, and one that Trump talked about frequently as President and is still floating around today, was the repeal of the Affordable Care Act. This would reopen coverage gaps in Medicare leading to higher cost-sharing and reinstating co-payments for preventive services.
As the New York Times mentionted In January 2020, cuts to social security programs such as Medicare were aimed at reducing the federal deficit that had ballooned as a result of tax cuts implemented in 2018 and increased federal government spending. Note, that was it before the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Massive government spending in 2020 and 2021 would widen the deficit further.
Under the Biden administration, reductions in Medicare spending have also been included in submitted budgets. But these were based almost entirely on the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act, which the government says will deliver budget savings through lower prescription drug prices. At the same time, Biden promised to “strengthen” the solvency of Medicare by raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
While the budgets proposed during the Trump administration did not directly remove benefits for Medicare enrollees, during his tenure the former President sought to cut Medicare spending through a variety of different means, some of which would have negative impact on Medicare beneficiaries indirectly.
