The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has analyzed Paul Ryan’s latest budget proposal and has found that, with regards to Medicare, it more or less mirrors his previous budgets while retaining cuts initiated by sequestration and the cuts to providers included in Obamacare.
The Ryan Budget would reopen the infamous donut hole and resurrect cost-sharing for preventive healthcare.
The Ryan budget would repeal health reform’s provisions that improve Medicare benefits, including closure of the Medicare prescription drug donut hole and coverage of preventive services without cost sharing. These repeals would adversely affect current Medicare beneficiaries as well as those not yet eligible.
Health reform has begun to close the donut hole — the gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage that many seniors experienced once their annual drug costs exceeded $2,840. Before health reform, seniors had no additional coverage until their costs hit $6,448. Starting in 2011, seniors in the coverage gap began receiving a discount on brand-name and generic prescription drugs. These discounts and Medicare coverage will gradually increase until 2020, when the entire donut hole is closed. The Ryan budget would reopen the drug donut hole.
Health reform also requires both private insurance companies and Medicare to cover preventive care services without any cost sharing. Preventive care includes screenings for chronic illnesses like diabetes and cancer and routine vaccines. The Ryan budget would reinstate cost sharing in Medicare for these preventive benefits.
It would also sustain cuts to Medicare included in sequestration but reinstate the cuts made to defense spending.
The Ryan budget retains the 2-percent “sequestration” cuts in Medicare that the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA) requires for 2013 through 2021 (it would repeal the sequestration cut in defense spending). [...]
The BCA limits the Medicare sequestration cut to 2 percent each year, to be achieved through cuts in payments to health care providers and private Medicare Advantage plans. This means that Medicare providers will continue to bill Medicare in the normal way, but Medicare will reimburse them at a rate of 98 cents on the dollar. In contrast, the Administration proposes to adopt other budgetary changes to replace the sequestration of Medicare and other programs.
For all their bluster concerning sequestration and their deep concern for its effects on the economy their poll numbers, the Republicans are supporting a budget that would codify much of what has already been cut and go far beyond it.