Study: Medicare cut before, reforms real

WASHINGTON, Dec. 4 (UPI) -- Despite claims the U.S. Congress never lets Medicare savings that lawmakers pass take effect, a study shows the vast majority of Medicare cuts are enacted.

The analysis, by James Horney and Paul Van de Water, former senior Congressional Budget Office officials now at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, examined the history of every Medicare cut Congress approved in the past 20 years -- specifically cuts approved in 1990, 1993, 1997 and 2005.

The study authors said virtually 100 percent of the 1990, 1993 and 2005 savings survived subsequent legislative sessions and nearly 80 percent of the 1997 savings survived.

"Today's conventional wisdom is wrong," Horney said in a statement. "Medicare savings have been a big part of all major deficit-reduction packages that Congress has enacted since 1990, and lawmakers have allowed the vast majority of those cuts to take effect."

In addition, claims that the House and Senate healthcare reform bills lack serious cost-containment provisions does withstand close scrutiny, the analysis says.

"These bills contain just about every reform that health policy experts have proposed to slow healthcare costs over time," Van de Water noted. "While we will ultimately have to do much more, the bills take most of the steps that we know enough about to pursue now in the areas that experts view as promising."