According to The New York Times, President Bush’s budget will include increases in the premiums paid for Medicare for those with higher incomes. A higher Medicare premium is being phased in over three years, beginning in 2007, for the doctor services portion of Medicare (Part B). Bush proposes to extend this means testing to the drug prescription benefit portion (Part D). Further, the income limits are currently indexed for inflation. Bush would like to remove the indexing, which would cause more people to pay the higher premiums.
Having higher-income people pay a larger share of Medicare costs makes sense to me, unless such people decide to leave Medicare. I don’t know how many people who are Medicare-eligible do not participate in the program.
Other budget items highlighted in the article:
- Children’s Health Insurance Program – 4% reduction
- National Cancer Institute – $9 million less than this year
- $17 million for a new program to promote “healthy behavior” among adolescents
- Elimination of the preventive health services block grant
- Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program -18% reduction
The budget will be presented Monday.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
According to the Kansas City Star (2/5/07), will also be reducing help for the poor. http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/nation/16623590.htm
“The president’s budget would achieve nearly $100 billion in savings over five years by trimming increases in Medicare, the health insurance program for 43 million retired and disabled people, and Medicaid, which provides health care to the poor.
The restraints in Medicare spending would total $66 billion over five years, while the savings in Medicaid would total $12.7 billion. Those proposals are certain to generate stiff opposition in Congress, which refused to go along with smaller Medicare reductions Bush proposed last year. The administration argues that it is seeking to slow the average annual increases in Medicare over the next 10 years to 6.7 percent instead of current projections of 7.4 percent.”
Where is the outrage? Are we paying attention to what this President is trying to do to our country? First destroy Iraq and ask us to pay for that. Then ask us to now pay for what he has destroyed. Poor people pay taxes too. How can we be so cruel?
No, we are not paying attention. We’d rather talk about the Super Bowl. (sigh)