President Joe Biden recently attacked Republicans for allegedly threatening to make plans to decimate Medicare. He said in his recent State of the Union address, “If anyone tries to cut Medicare, I will stop them.” This false accusation makes good political theater, but everyone knows Republicans have no intent on decimating Medicare. However, they are concerned enough about the future of Medicare to want to discuss ways to ensure its solvency.

We’ve been talking about Medicare’s future in recent posts. The Medicare board of trustees says that Medicare will be insolvent in six years if changes aren’t made soon. Seema Verma, the former director of CMS under President Trump, made some suggestions to solve the problem (The Medicare Status Quo Can’t Last) and I have made some comments on her ideas and suggestions of my own (Solving Medicare/Medicaid Insolvency).

Senator James Lankford has introduced a bill in Congress to address the problem by making it possible for physicians to own hospitals again, a prohibition under the Affordable Care Act (Doctor-Owned Hospitals). This bill would encourage physicians to own and operate for-profit hospitals, which have been shown to increase quality and lower costs in Medicare patients.

All of these ideas have merit and should be promoted. But the biggest threat to Medicare isn’t actually Republicans; it’s Joe Biden himself. That’s not my opinion, but the opinion of Grace Marie Turner writing for Galen.org. She says Biden has a long record of making deep cuts in Medicare. She gives several examples to support her claims:

• The Biden administration proposed on Feb. 1 “payment regulations” impacting the popular Medicare Advantage plans where 30 million seniors get their coverage. The proposal affects the higher risk adjustment payments that MA plans get for sicker seniors to cover their more expensive care, as Doug Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum explains.
• A study released by the Better Medicare Alliance showed the administration’s plans would mean a “$540 decrease in benefits per member per year,” or a “Medicare cut” of $150 billionover 10 years.
• Only six months ago, Mr. Biden spearheaded passage of the Inflation Reduction Act that the CBO calculates decreases Medicare spending by $307 billion to finance a slew of initiatives, including hiring 87,000 new IRS agents.  The cuts already are causing drug companies to halt research on promising new treatments. “The bill would reduce drug industry research and development by about $663 billion,resulting in 135 fewer new medicines. This will amount to a loss of 330 million life-years, about 30 times the loss from COVID-19 so far,” according to Prof. Tomas Philipson of the University of Chicago.  So much for seniors’ quality of life, as Sally Pipes explains.
• And this is after Biden voted in 2010 to cut $716 billion from Medicare to finance Obamacare subsidies. The Manhattan Institute’s Chris Pope details the history of how cutting Medicare repeatedly is used as a piggy bank to pay for other spending.

She says Medicare Advantage definitely needs modernizing but in a thoughtful, data-driven way, as AEI’s Dr. Brian Miller, economist Steve Parente, and former Medicare and Medicaid director Gail Wilensky explain. Heritage’s Bob Moffit writes that Medicare Advantage should be the basis for overall Medicare modernization after demonstrating that seniors enrolled in MA plans during Covid had “fewer hospitalizations, fewer deaths, and a greater ability to receive treatment for routine medical conditions.”

(For links to these other commentators, see her newsletter at Galen.org.)

Everyone wants Medicare to survive and prosper in the future. Anyone who claims their political opponents want to cut Medicare is lying to the American people; perhaps to cover their own sins.