Medicare and medcaid cuts 2009 budget

Huge Cuts Would Endanger Access to Quality Care for Massachusetts’s 894,000 Medicare and 1,000,000 Medicaid Beneficiaries. The Administration’s budget includes $195 billion in cuts over five years to Medicare and Medicaid that threaten to endanger Massachusetts’s 894,000 Medicare and 1,000,000 Medicaid patients’ access to the care they need to lead healthy, independent lives. Under the President’s plan, $178 billion would be cut from Medicare and $17 billion from Medicaid over five years. These cuts would be achieved by reducing reimbursements to health care providers and charging higher premiums based on income for Medicare beneficiaries for coverage of prescription drugs and doctors’ services. [Kaiser Family Foundation, State Health Facts, March 2006 and December 2006; President Bush’s Budget, FY2009; Department of Health and Human Services.]