From the Washington Times:
White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said Wednesday there are still ways the administration can propose to trim spending on Social Security and Medicare without limiting basic benefits — something President Trump has said he won’t do.
He said the key is to find programs that siphon money from entitlements, but aren’t part of the core programs. He pointed to Medicare money going to pay students’ medical school tuition as the type of target the administration could try to tackle without cutting into Americans’ benefits.
“You can reform and save a ton of money in Medicare and Social Security and not touch the primary pillars for the next several years,” he told state legislators at an event hosted by the American Legislative Exchange Council. ...
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He said there are just three agencies that will spend less, and hire fewer people, this year compared to last year. All of them operate outside of Congress’s appropriations process.
One of those is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which Mr. Mulvaney is running as acting director.
“So if you let the Trump administration and his appointees run an agency, we’ll do it cheaper and with fewer people and do it better,” he said.
Of course the Trump administration can run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau more cheaply - I think they would be happy for it not to exist at all, so running it better to them means not having it do anything. That can be done very cheaply.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is that in name only now. The Social Security Administration is bare bones now.
Our benefits are small enough and the local workers are working too many voluntary hours now.
He seems to be talking about cutting Medicare payments given to teaching hospitals to train residents. This would not seem to result in any net savings as if they did not have residents they would have to be paying more to established doctors
Eliminating the use of Medicare funds to pay for students' medical school tuition. That sounds like a big saver. Notice how he said "not touch the primary pillars for the next several years". That's because most of the plans to reduce benefits don't have much immediate effect but kick in later and he knows that.
Don't forget that Trump's budget proposed no more fee withholding without an alternative. People that have been without for years will get their back pay and handle their debts first and paying the attorney fee will take later priority. Fewer attorneys, means fewer claimant's having hearings with fewer ALJ's needed, and most importantly fewer people getting approved. It cuts social security without cutting social security.
Meanwhile, we have a looming doctor shortage.
https://news.aamc.org/press-releases/article/workforce_report_shortage_04112018/
And a report from earlier this week states that 29% of our doctors are... wait for it... immigrants.
So let's just stop training doctors and then when people can't get a doctor appointment the cost of Medicare will go down... until they end up in the ER and a problem that could have easily been taken care of in an office visit becomes a $50,000 hospital stay.
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