House Excludes Medicare Cuts

March 21, 2003
The House voted 215 to 212 to adopt a House budget resolution that excludes more than $200 billion in Medicare cuts that were originally approved by the House Budget Committee.

The resolution proposes about $93 billion in cuts to Medicaid over 10 years and a one percent across-the-board spending cut for all mandatory programs except Medicare, defense and homeland security.

Bush Administration officials said a rapid conclusion to the war with Iraq was necessary if progress was to be made in "reforming" Medicare and institutiong a prescription program.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator Thomas Scully told a group of private hospital officials that getting the war in Iraq over quickly is key to turning the nation's attention back to domestic policies.

"I think a lot of it depends on the war, obviously," Scully said at a meeting of the Federation of American Hospitals.

A decisive victory and a rapid upturn in the economy would make it much easier to make progress on the Administration's stalled domestic agenda, he said.

American Hospital Association Executive Vice President Rick Pollack commended the House for rejecting specific cuts to the Medicare program, but said AHA was "deeply disappointed" the resolution still included the Medicaid cuts. "This is not the time for the federal government to back away from its commitment to the people served by this program: the poor, the disabled and the elderly," Pollack said.

"Today's vote hurts hospitals' ability to care for our most vulnerable citizens," he added.

The Senate was working on its version of a fiscal 2004 budget resolution. House and Senate budget negotiators could begin meeting this week to reconcile differences between the two resolutions.