Bush Seeks Big Medicare and Medicaid Saving

February 2, 2007
Bush Seeks Big Medicare and Medicaid Saving

WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — President Bush will ask Congress in his budget next week to squeeze more than $70 billion of savings from Medicare and Medicaid over the next five years, administration officials and health care lobbyists said Thursday.

Mr. Bush is also expected to propose changes in the Children's Health Insurance Program to sharpen its focus on low-income families. The changes could reduce federal payments to states that cover children with family incomes exceeding twice the poverty level. Under federal guidelines, a family of four is considered poor if its annual income is less than $20,650.

One measure of the political difficulty facing the president's plan for Medicare and Medicaid is that he sought $20 billion less in savings from the two programs last year, when Republicans controlled Congress, and few of those proposals were adopted.