By: SUSAN FERRECHIO
Chief Congressional Correspondent
The Washington Examiner
September 24, 2009
President Obama’s repeated pledge that senior citizens would not lose benefits under his proposed cuts to Medicare has been officially contradicted by an independent congressional analyst whose dire prediction could put the latest Senate health proposal in jeopardy.
The $856 billion health care reform bill now being drafted in the Senate Finance Committee would be paid for in part by slashing $125 billion from the Medicare Advantage program, which is used by about 9 million people, or nearly 20 percent of all Medicare recipients.
The cuts would come from the additional benefits Medicare Advantage enrollees receive, Congressional Budget Office Director Doug Elmendorf told the committee, and would amount to reducing those benefits by “a little more than half.”
Under Elmendorf’s estimates, Medicare Advantage enrollees would receive about $42 monthly in additional benefits in 2019 under the current health care proposal, not the more than $84 in benefits they would get without the cuts.
As a result, Elmendorf said, about 20 percent of Medicare Advantage users, approximately 2.7 million, would drop out of the program and would instead use standard Medicare.
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