Obama Kicks the Hornet’s Nest on Medicare

The President laid out his recommendations on Medicare and Medicaid to the Congressional Super-Committee on Tuesday: about $320 Billion’s worth, mostly retreads of long-standing recommendations from other budget-cutting panels like Bowles-Simpson.  Kaiser Health News has the details in their Wednesday story.  The White House fact sheet on the President’s proposal can be found here.

Obama really kicked the hornet’s nest on this one — and may have forfeited the political gift of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s broadside to Medicare just a few months ago. Obama’s taking lumps, as you’d expect, from Congressional Republicans, who in their outright refusal to look at revenue raisers, are setting up for Debt Ceiling Battle Royale Redux. But now AARP, AMA and the hospital lobby, just to name a few, are piling on.

The President gave a long-overdue impassioned plea in the Rose Garden yesterday, with the exclamation point of a veto threat for Republicans if they try to close the budget gap purely with cuts.  The problem is, he’s giving Democrats very little raw meat to line up for, only pain.  Sure, Obama backed off the idea of raising the eligibility age for Medicare to 67, explicitly tied entitlement and tax reform, and didn’t cut as much from Medicaid. That may placate his base.  But not much.

I suspect he’s going to have a hell of a time getting his own caucus to line up for him in the coming weeks.  And my money’s on an epic fail by the Super-Committee, resulting in sequestration in December — and that’s a more favorable outcome for Medicare Advantage and Part D.

P.S. I’ll be talking more about this and other issues on the national stage at the Opal Medicare Advantage Strategic Business Symposium, September 26-27.  Click here for more details about that event.