No. of Recommendations: 8
Cut $880 billion over 10 years without cutting benefits? Can’t be done.
Combined, they cost about $2 trillion a year. So $20 trillion over 10 years. So they’re looking to save about 4.4% of the current budget for the two programs.
But Medicare overhead is just under 2% of their spending, and Medicaid’s overhead is 4%.
The math simply doesn’t work.
Arguably, you might be able to get Medicaid overhead down to the 2% of Medicare. But that’s only 1/4 of the target savings at best.
Negotiating drug prices could be another source of savings. But will the MAGA crowd in Congress go for that?
—Peter
