The president took an extra week to develop his budget, but the extra time was apparently not enough to yield Medicare policies that could produce real savings. The 2013 budget released today relies on the same tired proposals that we have seen previously. Provider payment cuts, delicately referred to as “modifications,” account for $267 billion in savings over the next decade. For a program that will cost taxpayers more than $6.7 trillion, this is a disappointingly modest savings target—and even so, it is not likely to be met.
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