Bush Seeks Big Medicare and Medicaid Saving

[Guest guest]

February 2, 2007

Bush Seeks Big Medicare and Medicaid Saving

By ROBERT PEAR

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — President Bush will ask Congress

in his budget next week to squeeze more than $70

billion of savings from Medicare and Medicaid over the

next five years, administration officials and health

care lobbyists said Thursday.

The proposals, part of a White House plan to balance

the budget by 2012, set the stage for a battle with

Congress over entitlement spending. Even some

administration officials say they cannot imagine

approval of such large cutbacks in a Congress now

controlled by Democrats.

Mr. Bush is also expected to propose changes in the

Children’s Health Insurance Program to sharpen its

focus on low-income families. The changes could reduce

federal payments to states that cover children with

family incomes exceeding twice the poverty level.

Under federal guidelines, a family of four is

considered poor if its annual income is less than

$20,650.

The child health proposal, like those for Medicare and

Medicaid, is likely to touch off a fight on Capitol

Hill. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and

other Democrats are seeking major expansions of the

children’s health program, though they have not said

how they would pay for the changes.

One measure of the political difficulty facing the

president’s plan for Medicare and Medicaid is that he

sought $20 billion less in savings from the two

programs last year, when Republicans controlled

Congress, and few of those proposals were adopted.

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Regards,

Vergel

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