House Republican Budget Would Overhaul Medicare and Repeal Health Law

House Republicans’ proposed budget for 2016 partly privatizes Medicare, turns Medicaid into block grants to the states, repeals the Affordable Care Act, and reaches balance in 10 years, challenging Republicans in Congress to make good on their promises to deeply cut federal spending. The House proposal leans heavily on the policy prescriptions that Representative Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin outlined when he was budget chairman, according to senior House Republican aides and members of Congress who were not authorized to speak in advance of the official release. With the Senate now also in Republican hands, this year’s proposal is more politically salient than in years past, especially for Republican senators facing re-election in Democratic or swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Illinois, and New Hampshire, and for potential Republican presidential candidates. Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, is vowing a fight to lift caps on military spending. On Monday, President Obama tried to get ahead of the debate by criticizing Republican plans to abide by strict domestic and military spending caps. “I can tell you that if the budget maintains sequester-level funding, then we would actually be spending less on pre-K to 12th grade in America’s schools in terms of federal support than we were back in 2000,” the President said in a speech to the Council of the Great City Schools.  The budget “repeals all of Obamacare,” Representative Diane Black, Republican of Tennessee, said the same day the Obama administration announced that the law had provided coverage to 16.4 million previously uninsured people. Under congressional rules, a budget cannot be filibustered in the Senate, so Republicans would bear most of the responsibility if they failed to pass one.

Source/more: New York Times

David Wingate is an elder law attorney practicing in Frederick and Montgomery counties, Maryland. The practice includes trusts, wills, powers of attorney, Medicaid, and asset protection.