Health-care policy expert Julie Carter said on Monday that putting a cap on out-of-pocket costs for Medicare and Medicaid is the most important move Congress can do to fix the programs.
“What’s the single, most important, single most helpful fix to Medicare, Medicaid that could be done by Congress?” Hill.TV’s Buck Sexton asked Carter on “Rising.”
“A cap on the out-of-pocket costs for people in traditional Medicare, and that would be both for the outpatient and also for medications,” Carter responded. “So some sort of cap for how much they’re paying out of pocket would be very important.”
Carter’s comments come 53 years after former President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the two health-care programs into law.
House Republicans last month proposed a budget that included $537 billion in cuts to Medicare and $1.5 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, as well as other health-care programs.
The budget pushed Medicare toward a system of private health insurance plans that would compete with one another, as opposed to the current government-provided system.
The budget also imposed additional caps to Medicaid that would lead to cuts in payments over time.
— Julia Manchester
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