The House bill, as of now, would trigger massive cuts to the program.
As many Americans were still sleeping Thursday morning, the House of Representatives passed a bill whose text they hadn’t read, Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The bill’s sweeping cuts to Medicaid, contributing to 14 million fewer people having health coverage by 2034, have received wide coverage. Less well known, however, is the bill’s dire implications for Medicare recipients. If the House version of the bill becomes law, Medicare payments to medical providers would be slashed by more than $500 billion over the next 10 years. This would have serious implications for tens of millions of older adults and providers and may even cause hospitals to close.
The explanation of how these automatic cuts to Medicare spending would work:
Though the GOP bill doesn’t explicitly call for Medicare cuts, it would trigger them under the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act. Congress passed Stat PAYGO in 2010 to discourage policymakers from enacting tax cuts and spending that would increase federal deficits.
Under Stat PAYGO, the Office of Management and Budget must keep “PAYGO scorecards” for five-year deficit impacts and 10-year deficit impacts. PAYGO stipulates that when any legislation is enacted, the average cost of the legislation for the next five years is entered into each year of the five-year scorecard and the average cost for the next 10 years is entered into each year of the 10-year scorecard. At the end of each session of Congress, if there is a cumulative deficit in that fiscal year on either scorecard, there is an automatic spending reduction (sequestration) to offset the larger of the two deficits. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the House Republican bill, if enacted, would increase the deficit by $2.3 trillion over 10 years, and trigger sequestration.
And as for social security:
Some types of funding, including many mandatory spending accounts like Social Security, are exempt from the automatic cuts, but Medicare provider payments are not.
So …
In short, though Trump and House Republicans promised this bill would not touch Medicare, at the moment that promise is broken.
Opinion | Trump made a promise not to touch Medicare. His megabill just broke it.
The House bill, as of now, would trigger massive cuts to the program.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-made-promise-not-touch-medicare-megabill-just-broke-rcna208518
