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Krauthammer: Senate Health Bill Will Send Medicare ‘OVER A CLIFF’
By PoliJAM | December 24, 2009
For Harry Reid to say that the Senate health care reform bill both extends Medicare a decade and achieves deficit neutrality, the Senate Majority Leader “is either obtuse or cynical,” Charles Krauthammer said Wednesday on Fox News’ Special Report.
Where did Reid learn the accounting procedures that he used to determine that the bill will cover Medicare costs a decade from now even though the money will have already been spent before the decade is out? After all, the costs of covering the uninsured doesn’t come for free.
Krauthammer goes on to lament about the Democrats’ shady accounting,
Share This“You can’t have a claim that you’re going to extend Medicare and be deficit neutral. The reason this is damaging is because if you do actually have to cut a half a trillion, and you spend immediately – as we are going to spend it – on expanding, on a new entitlement insuring the uninsured, then a potential saving in Medicare in the future is taken away and Medicare will go over a cliff. …
“[The health care bill] takes half a trillion in savings that you need in the future to keep Medicare alive and you’re spending it now on a new entitlement and that’s why it damages the deficit outlook and it’s a threat ultimately to Medicare and to the budget.”
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