Medicare cost

There is an ad on TV asking the government not to cut Medicare and this surprised me because Trump has stated he will not touch Medicare. I did not see that ad during the Obama years, when Medicare payments to providers was cut by 10%. In 2012 Medicare expenses were estimated to be $7.5 trillion over ten years and these were cut by $750 billion. In theory this would not cut any benefits to patience but in practice many feel that services will be curtailed to make up for the loss. The money that was saved was transferred to Obamacare to keep the ten year cost under one trillion and it came in at $848 billion. Two years later the cost estimate was over $2 trillion. This is the way most government programs become law. They low ball the cost to get the bill passed and then the cost goes up. The prime example is Medicare. 1. Jan 1, 1993 - At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that Medicare would cost only about $12 billion by 1990 (a figure that included an allowance for inflation). This was a supposedly "conservative" estimate. But in 1990 Medicare actually cost $107