Medicare Cuts Looming Unless Congress Intervenes

Ozarks First ^ | November 28, 2011 | Lisa Sylvester (For CNN)

[yorkie]

You could call it fallout from the Super Committee's big flop. Deficit-reducing budget cuts are slated to take effect in just over a year. Among those taking cuts -- hospitals and doctors that treat low-income patients.

Dr. William Strudwick is the director of the emergency department at Providence Hospital in northeast Washington DC. It's a neighborhood hospital with a patient base of the elderly and working poor.

"About 70 percent of the patients that come through our door rely on Medicare or Medicaid," Dr. Strudwick says.

But Medicare payments to Providence Hospital and other medical providers are slated for a 2 percent cut over the next nine years starting in 2013. This follows the congressional "super committee" failure to reach a deal on $1.2 trillion in spending cuts.

[XenaLee]

Even if you cut Obama’s salary in half and that of all of the reps, it would still be paying them more than they are worth.

I second the motion!

[KantianBurke]

Without reform entitlements will destroy this country. Either raise taxes to pay for them, cut benefits or a combo of the two. Pick your poison.

[cherry]

what this will mean is layoffs of nurses, therapists...perhaps now you'll get your phy therapy every two days instead of once or twice a day...they infact already cut the nunber of pts they can see in a day based not on drs orders but on how much staff they have...

this is what the American people want and they're going to get it good and hard....

I'd like to see what the UAW would do if big daddy decided to only pay them for part of their work, not all....