Republican Study Committee Budget Seeks to Save Medicare

The Republican Study Committee (RSC) unveiled its budget proposal which aims to boost the solvency of Medicare.

The Republican Study Committee budget proposal, titled “Protecting America’s Economic Security,” contains several conservative proposals. Breitbart News’s Ashley Oliver exclusively reported how the bill would repeal the Biden administration’s pistol brace rule, among other Second Amendment proposals.

RSC Chairman Kevin Hern (R-OK) and budget task force chairman Ben Cline (R-VA) led the creation of the budget proposal.

The RSC budget hopes to boost the solvency of Medicare, and the RSC budget details that on the entitlement program’s current trajectory it is headed for drastic cuts.

The RSC cites the latest Medicare Trustees estimate, which finds that the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be depleted in 2031, at which time payments to healthcare providers will be cut more than 11 percent. This payment reduction would likely lead to rationed care for current and future Medicare beneficiaries.

The RSC budget lashes out at Biden’s legacy of using the “Medicare program as a piggy bank to reward special interests.” It also cites that the Inflation Reduction Act would reduce drug benefits for seniors:

As Vice-President, Biden supported the passage of Obamacare, which raided $716 billion from Medicare to pay for the failed Affordable Care Act. This included $415 billion in reduced payments to doctors and hospitals. Additionally, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) used nearly $300 billion generated largely from Medicare price controls to pay for its woke agenda. The IRA’s price controls have already eliminated investments in life-saving drugs — including for blood cancer — and reduced the total number of life-saving drugs available by 342.

Breitbart News reported how the Inflation Reduction Act would curb seniors’ Medicare prescription drug benefits ahead of the midterms.

To fix Medicare’s path to insolvency, the RSC budget would implement a “premium support model where private plans would compete with a federal Medicare plan (the ‘Fed Plan’) that would offer the traditional Medicare benefits through Part A, B, and D.” The budget explained:

Under this plan, Medicare’s trust funds would be merged into a singular fund that would be responsible for paying premium support subsidies to cover the vast majority of their premium costs. This framework would ensure seniors, whether they choose a private plan or the Fed Plan, receive more affordable, high-quality coverage. The size of premium subsidies would be benchmarked to the cost of the Fed Plan, and Medicare would retain all of the current tools at its disposal to reduce costs and provide high-quality coverage. CBO has found that a more limited version of this model would reduce seniors’ premiums overall by 7 percent. [352] The reforms contained in the RSC’s Budget should exceed that projection. Overall, seniors would pay lower Medicare premiums and lower taxes under the RSC’s Budget than President Biden’s budget.

While the Biden administration has often accused Republicans of wanting to cut Medicare and other entitlement programs, Biden has moved to cut Medicare Advantage, an increasingly popular option for seniors.

The RSC proposal would also eliminate “duplicative and market-distorting subsidies” in Medicare plans that increase costs.

The RSC continued:

It would also reform the flawed system of graduate medical education (GME) payments to incentivize hospitals to compete for funding by prioritizing residencies in priority specialties and addressing healthcare professional shortages.

The RSC Budget would also implement site-neutral payment policies throughout the Medicare program to lower costs and reduce consolidation in the hospital sector, modify payments to hospitals for uncompensated care and eliminate Medicare’s financial coverage of bad hospital debt, which has failed to lower costs for patients.

Hern said in a written statement:

The Biden administration has been lying to the American people. The RSC Budget does not cut benefits or raise premiums for Medicare beneficiaries. We make plans compete for their seniors’ hard-earned money and find other savings that have nothing to do with premiums or benefits.

Hern added, “This is a win for seniors who will have lower premiums and the same high-quality coverage under the RSC Budget. That’s a fact.”

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