Newt Gingrich, speaker of the house from 1995 to 1999, and Bobby Jindal, former governor of Louisiana and assistant HHS Secretary from 2001 to 2003, propose four strategies to reduce Medicare spending without raising taxes or cutting benefits.
The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 reduced Medicare spending through several mechanisms, including shifting home care to a prospective payment system, according to the Commonwealth Fund. The act also eliminated some requirements for states to pay deductibles and coinsurance for low-income Medicare beneficiaries and required more oversight of fraud.
Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Jindal wrote that some of these same principles could be employed to reduce long-term Medicare spending today, to avoid the Medicare hospital trust fund running out in 2028.
To reduce costs without cutting benefits, Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Jindal propose:
- Establishing site-neutral payment policies
- Ending bad-debt compensation for hospitals
- Investing in data infrastructure to prevent fraud
- Accounting for savings from preventive care more accurately
Read the op-ed here.
