An opinion piece by Christopher Jennings, president of Jennings Policy Strategies and a senior healthcare advisor to President Bill Clinton from 1994 to 2001, in the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests healthcare would suffer fewer cuts under automatic cuts compared to cuts agreed to by the Congressional joint "super" committee.
He writes, "automatic cuts are by far the best poison to be forced to take, particularly in comparison to the concoction they fear the super committee could produce."
Under the debt limit deal legislation, the automatic cuts will be triggered if the super committee fails to agree on $1.2 trillion in cuts. "The theory was that the $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts to popular programs such as the military and Medicare outlined in the law's fallback 'sequester' provision would be so damaging that all sides would produce a budget compromise to avoid the need for such cuts," writes Mr. Jennings. However, he suggests that healthcare would experience smaller aggregate cuts under the automatic alternative.
If automatic cuts were triggered, reductions to Medicare payments would be capped at 2 percent of total Medicare spending and Medicaid would not be affected. If a super committee agrees to cuts, it is likely Republicans would push for additional Medicare cuts as well as cuts to the Medicaid program. They would likely also look to scale back entitlement benefits, thus moving beyond just impacting providers.
Mr. Jennings says that while a "well-constructed compromise — which would include an array of policies to spur job growth and boost the economy, a thoughtful collection of payment and cost-sharing reforms to sustain and strengthen Medicare and Medicaid over the long term, a long-overdue fix for physician payment, and a reasonable deal on tax reform that closes loopholes and raises revenue" would be the best course of action, he and other policy analysts doubt that is possible given to current polarized political climate.
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He writes, "automatic cuts are by far the best poison to be forced to take, particularly in comparison to the concoction they fear the super committee could produce."
Under the debt limit deal legislation, the automatic cuts will be triggered if the super committee fails to agree on $1.2 trillion in cuts. "The theory was that the $1.2 trillion in automatic cuts to popular programs such as the military and Medicare outlined in the law's fallback 'sequester' provision would be so damaging that all sides would produce a budget compromise to avoid the need for such cuts," writes Mr. Jennings. However, he suggests that healthcare would experience smaller aggregate cuts under the automatic alternative.
If automatic cuts were triggered, reductions to Medicare payments would be capped at 2 percent of total Medicare spending and Medicaid would not be affected. If a super committee agrees to cuts, it is likely Republicans would push for additional Medicare cuts as well as cuts to the Medicaid program. They would likely also look to scale back entitlement benefits, thus moving beyond just impacting providers.
Mr. Jennings says that while a "well-constructed compromise — which would include an array of policies to spur job growth and boost the economy, a thoughtful collection of payment and cost-sharing reforms to sustain and strengthen Medicare and Medicaid over the long term, a long-overdue fix for physician payment, and a reasonable deal on tax reform that closes loopholes and raises revenue" would be the best course of action, he and other policy analysts doubt that is possible given to current polarized political climate.
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