News
Barrasso co-introduces bill to stave off Medicare cuts
Published
4 years agoon
By
Pat Blair
Wyoming’s U.S. Senator John Barrasso has joined Arizona Senator Tom Cotton to introduce legislation that would redirect a portion of the recently passed $1.9 trillion Democrat spending bill to address looming cuts to Medicare.
The Protecting Seniors Access to Health Care Act would reallocate $12.3 billion to health care providers impacted by COVID-19, which is the same amount mandated by the automatic 2 percent spending cut known as the sequester. The sequester is a 2 percent reduction in payments to Medicare providers that was to have started in 2013.
Congress previously intervened on a bipartisan basis to stop the cuts, and the sequester was suspended from May 1, 2020, to Dec. 31, 2020, through a provision in the CARES Act. Congress then acted in the 2020 end-of-year funding bill to continue the relief until March 31, 2021 – next Wednesday.
The $1.9 trillion partisan spending bill recently enacted by the Democrats did not include relief from the Medicare sequester. As a result, Medicare providers will again experience an automatic spending cut without legislation such as Barrasso and Cotton have introduced.
Barrasso said that the Democrats’ inability to avoid cuts to Medicare providers fighting COVID-19 during a pandemic in their $1.9 trillion bill was “another bad surprise in a bill that was full of them.”
Cotton said the Democrats in the last so-called relief bill allocated funding for a variety of liberal pet projects, but neglected to address the impending Medicare sequestration deadline. He said the legislation he and Barrasso introduced fixes the problem that Democrats caused and ensures that seniors are protected.
Dennis West
March 23, 2021 at 5:04 pm
Don’t trust anything this guy says. He said nothing when the last prez encouraged followers to interfere with the US’s 220 year history of peaceful transition of power after an election. He is being mentored by McConnell, who only wants to keep power, money and prestige. This guy Barrasso blames everyone but the repubs for the irresponsible and incompetent governing by power and money hungry politicians whose only goal is to stay in DC and live high off of us (including by encouraging riots to interfere with a constitutional process). No integrity, no honor.
Conveniently, Barrasso fails to mention that the sequester was a result of the repubs deciding under McConnell in 2008, that their goal was to make Obama a one term president, and from then on wouldn’t engage in any important legislation. Biden has seen this obstruction before. He tried, with Obama, to work with repubs. Fool me once. . . Don’t think he’ll be fooled twice. Oh yeah, and when the repubs got their chance to legislate – where’s the better and improved healthcare replacing Obamacare? Huh, Dr. Barrasso? You’ve got good coverage, how about the rest of the citizens. Oh yeah, you said citizens might just use coverage if they got it. Apparently undeservedly (unlike you who does deserve your Cadillac plan). Don’t trust this man. Don’t trust the repubs.
Mitch Smith
March 23, 2021 at 6:44 pm
Yeah, just spend the money……….Let our children worry about how we will pay it back! Someone needs to educate these politicians on what credit is and how it needs to be paid back. It is one thing to buy, and another thing to pay it back.
Thomas Jones
March 23, 2021 at 8:21 pm
Tom Cotton is a senator from Arkansas. John barrasso is a senator from the US chamber of commerce.
Cindy Livingston
March 24, 2021 at 11:23 am
I do not have a high opinion of the medical industry, I admit that. It is not the care itself, but the cost of that care. A vast percentage of people are one major illness from bankruptcy. People choose to die instead of being bankrupted by the medical industry. However, I am old enough to have seen what happens when the government chooses what they will pay for medical care and that is that they raise their prices for everyone to make up for what the government refuses to pay. So is passing legislation to just give the medical industry more money going to stop that? No, because they have already raised the prices and if this passes they are not going to lower them. I was in the middle of cancer treatments a year before ACA went into effect and saw all of the price hikes first hand. My health insurance went from $489 per month all the way up to $950 in one year, the year BEFORE the ACA actually went into effect. My visits went from $79 to $232 in 2 years, starting a year BEFORE the ACA went into effect. The ACA encouraged “networks” to “keep costs low” as they would have volume and would not need to charge as much. All it did was do away with “reasonable and customary because the entire network raised their prices together. Networks are now monopolies and the costs of care makes everyone financially vulnerable. Speaking of financially vulnerable, it may be time to pass the Medicaid expansion here in WY. I do wonder if the cuts and the expansion will more medical professionals refuse to accept Medicare and Medicaid. It is a tough issue.
Gary M Small
March 26, 2021 at 11:33 pm
Wasn’t this the same guy that was against Wyoming Medicare Expansion a few years ago?