About a month ago, we revised our issues table on the front page of this website to show that the Progressive Party opposes cuts in Medicare, while the Democrats and Republicans do not. A prominent Democrat questioned our conclusion that the Democratic Party is in favor of Medicare cuts. We said, "Just wait and see."    Read more ...

We only had to wait a few weeks. Obama and the Democratic "leadership" in Congress now have agreed to huge (probably over $400 billion) automatic cuts to Medicare funding over 10 years, unless Congress and the President somehow by 2012 come up with some $1.2 trillion in cuts to other programs.

There are now about 48 million elderly folks who are covered by Medicare. Cutting $400 billion over 10 years means reducing the funding for each enrollee by an average of about $833 per year. Thanks, Democrats!

As Paul Krugman said yesterday:

"Make no mistake about it, what we’re witnessing here is a catastrophe on multiple levels. It is, of course, a political catastrophe for Democrats, who just a few weeks ago seemed to have Republicans on the run over their plan to dismantle Medicare; now Mr. Obama has thrown all that away. And the damage isn’t over: there will be more choke points where Republicans can threaten to create a crisis unless the president surrenders, and they can now act with the confident expectation that he will."

The debt ceiling deal is being falsely described as not having automatic cuts to Medicare.  Note the language about no cuts to "Medicare benefits."  The cuts are to Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals, which means that it will be much harder to find doctors or hospitals to perform the treatments or prescribe the medications that elderly persons need.  It is an equally bad end result as a cut to "Medicare benefits."