Defenders of Medicare Warn of GOP Cuts

On the eve of the 30th anniversary of the House vote to create Medicare, groups of physicians and seniors sounded an alarm Friday about cuts they fear Republicans are readying for the huge health insurance program.

At a news conference in a GOP social club on Capitol Hill, the organizations acknowledged Medicare has serious financial problems that must be fixed.

But they said lawmakers should not use that as an excuse for cuts really intended to help close the federal budget deficit.

“If we make meat-ax cuts in Medicare,” said Dr. Joanne Lynn, a geriatric specialist from Hanover, N.H., that will make reform harder and “condemn many of us, as we become old, frail and vulnerable, to a life of impoverishment and preventable suffering.”

Medicare’s trustees reported Monday that the hospital trust fund will go broke in the year 2002 unless something is done. That is a year later than their previous forecast.

“Certainly there is a case for real reform in Medicare,” said Tess Canja of Port Charlotte, Fla., a director of the American Assn. of Retired Persons. “But the rhetoric of reform should not be used as a cover for severe cuts or for dismantling Medicare as we know it.”

Republican leaders of Congress have talked about seeking savings of $100 billion to $150 billion from Medicare over the next five years. House Budget Committee Chairman John R. Kasich (R-Ohio) is preparing a budget blueprint expected to squeeze both Medicare providers and patients.

Dr. Alan R. Nelson, executive vice president of the American Society of Internal Medicine, said: “We ought to remove the need to restructure Medicare and take it above the current budget fray” and address it in a bipartisan way.

Dr. Patrick B. Harr of Maryville, Mo., chairman of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said past cuts mean his colleagues already lose money treating the elderly. “We do feel like our backs are against the wall,” he said.

Even if physicians’ incomes were cut in half, that wouldn’t solve Medicare’s financial troubles, said Lynn, a leader of the American Geriatrics Society.

But society must decide whether someone with little chance of survival should be hospitalized for aggressive treatment or “allowed to die in a nursing home,” she said. The American Osteopathic Assn. is also part of the Primary Care Coalition fighting Medicare cuts.

Passage of Medicare was one of the major achievements of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society. The House voted for it, 313-115, on April 8, 1965, and the Senate followed suit a few weeks later. Johnson signed the program into law on July 30, 1965.