•    The majority say that their bill strengthens Medicare. Quite the contrary. The bill makes drastic cuts across Medicare fee-for-service providers to give Medicaid to childless adults and government subsidies for persons who have up until now chosen not to buy insurance.

o    Hospitals and facilities receiving Medicare market basket payment updates will be cut $160.5 billion.
o    Home health agencies are cut $56.8 billion.
o    Medical equipment such as oxygen tanks, wheel chairs and nebulizers for children with asthma and imaging services are cut $1.2 billion.

•    And the cuts do not stop there. The bill steals money from seniors. Democrats cut the Medicare Advantage benefit by $172 billion. This is money that is used in the program to buy down premiums and eliminate co-pays, provide enhanced benefits such as vision and dental benefits, and provide access to affordable prescription drugs.

•    What the majority do not understand is that seniors like Medicare Advantage and do not want to lose benefits in order to fund health care for all.

•    The House majority’s leadership argue that this bill helps seniors by filling in the Medicare Part D prescription drug program “doughnut hole.” The problem is, they do so largely outside of the 10 year budget window. What this means is seniors won’t largely see the benefit until 15 years from now. And the total price of completing this task to the federal budget is unknown.

•    This bill spends billions of taxpayer dollars then cuts billions of dollars out of Medicare services. The bill then comes up short billions more. How does the House majority’s leadership balance the books? They tax.

•    The bill raids the Medicare Trust Fund to pay for research that may never produce any savings. So in essence, the majority’s bill steals from the already ever-shrinking Medicare Trust Fund.