During a Ways and Means Health Subcommittee hearing focusing on the solvency of Medicare, two Medicare Trustees testified that findings in the 2011 Medicare Trustees report reinforce what has long been widely acknowledged:  Action must be taken quickly to prevent Medicare from collapsing.  However, despite comments by the Medicare Trustees urging Congress to act sooner, rather… Read more

Former Democrat Leader Dick Gephardt is out this week with a scathing editorial on the so-called Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which was created in the Democrats' health care law.  Below are just a few excerpts from Leader Gephardt's column.   Devastating for Seniors: "IPAB will be an unelected and unaccountable group whose sole charge is to reduce Medicare… Read more

House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Wally Herger (R-CA) today announced that the Subcommittee on Health will hold a hearing on the recently released 2011 Annual Report of the Boards of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds.  In what will be the first in a series of hearings on Medicare’s future, the… Read more

Today’s hearing on the 2011 Medicare Trustees report reinforces what has long been widely acknowledged:  Action must be taken to prevent Medicare from reaching its rapidly approaching insolvency and collapsing. The trustees currently predict the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) trust fund will go bankrupt in 2024, five years earlier than they estimated in last year’s… Read more

HEALTH SUBCOMMITTEE 2011 MEDICARE TRUSTEE REPORT HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS … Read more

With talks on reaching a deal to cut spending and raise the debt ceiling reaching a critical stage, the venerable over-50 organization AARP has weighed in with a television advertisement that seeks to shift the focus from entitlement programs such as Medicare onto what it deems to be wasteful spending by Congress. We had earlier given the American public four Pinocchios for failing to… Read more

Obamacare poses two great dangers to our nation: lower quality of care and runaway costs. It will stifle innovation and lead to rationing. But the overwhelming cost and the damage it will do to our nation’s finances at a pivotal moment in our history deserve greater scrutiny. The promises Obamacare supporters have made about the ultimate cost of the program are based on highly unlikely… Read more

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, and House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) issued the following statement in response to news that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will no longer accept applications for waivers from the Democrats’ health care law after September 22, 2011. … Read more

AARP is out with a new TV ad attacking Congressional Democrats and Republicans for considering policies that would extend the solvency of the Medicare program and reduce our nation’s staggering debt.  In the ad AARP absurdly suggests the nation’s trillion dollar deficit and nearly $15 trillion debt can be solved by miniscule cuts to earmarks.  This is hard to reconcile with… Read more

Today, Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) outlined a plan which he says would reduce Medicare spending by $200 billion and extend the program's solvency for approximately 20 years.  While his call for higher taxes — especially when the unemployment rate is at 9.1 percent — is troubling, he deserves credit for recognizing that Medicare is fast going broke and is in need of… Read more