Subject: Re: Remember when they said ...
Cut $880 billion over 10 years without cutting benefits? Can’t be done.

Combined, they cost about $2 trillion a year. So $20 trillion over 10 years. So they’re looking to save about 4.4% of the current budget for the two programs.

But Medicare overhead is just under 2% of their spending, and Medicaid’s overhead is 4%.

The math simply doesn’t work.

Arguably, you might be able to get Medicaid overhead down to the 2% of Medicare. But that’s only 1/4 of the target savings at best.

Negotiating drug prices could be another source of savings. But will the MAGA crowd in Congress go for that?

—Peter