Fox 3 stacks12/28/2023 Both measures put his math at risk.Ĭavuto used IRS data for 2011, 20. So the Medicare Trustees provided a slightly lower number than Cavuto used, and his other source provided a significantly lower number. "Showing the gross spending amount would, in a way, overstate federal spending on Medicare because some of that amount comes back to the Treasury in the form of premiums," Cubanski said. Juliette Cubanski, a top Medicare analyst at Kaiser, explained that the net amount does a better job of capturing the burden on taxpayers as a whole. That page reports the net figure, which factors in billions of dollars of premiums paid by Medicare users, along with recaptured inappropriate payments to providers.įor 2013, Kaiser reported net spending of $492 billion. We also found that the other source cited by Fox Business, the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is widely seen as a neutral source of health care data, focuses on the net outlays, not the gross spending.įox Business directed us to the foundation’s Medicare fact-sheet. (The difference is due to accounting rules.) Since that comes from the Trustees' official report to Congress, we gave it some weight. While the CMS fact sheet does report $585.7 billion in gross spending, the Medicare Trustees, the program’s overseers, reported a slightly lower $582.9 billion for 2013. We found a discrepancy in the gross outlay number. Gross outlays are basically money out the door, and net outlays reduces the total based on the money Medicare takes in apart from the federal budget and the payroll tax. Medicare spending is reported in two ways: Gross outlays and net outlays. We tried to repeat Cavuto’s analysis and ran into some issues.Ĭavuto’s Medicare spending number is not bulletproof. Using Cavuto’s estimate, three years of Medicare spending is more than all the money the top 1 percent took in. The correct number is actually $1.757 trillion, but the point remains the same. They multiplied the Medicare number by three and found that it would be $1.755 trillion over three years. That page gave them the figure of $585.7 billion of Medicare expenditures. They came up with "about $1.75 trillion."įor the cost of Medicare, they went to two sources: The Kaiser Family Foundation, which we’ll get to in a moment, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services web page on national health expenditures for 2013. Instead, a spokeswoman explained that Cavuto and his producer averaged the yearly income going to the top 1 percent as reported by the Internal Revenue Service for 2011, 20. The Fox press office didn’t point us to any studies. We asked the Fox Business Network for studies backing up Cavuto’s math. We don’t want to get boring either, but reader be warned: Numbers, multiplication and subtraction lie ahead. Could the wealthiest 1 percent pay for Medicare for three years or not? Several readers asked us to check Cavuto’s basic math. Do you know it wouldn’t keep Medicare - just Medicare - going for three years? " But even if you were to take the 1 percent, and take all of their money, tax it 100 percent. "They’ve done studies on this, Keely," Cavuto said. "The 1 percent of society that are hoarding all the wealth and causing a catastrophe that students are facing," Mullen answered.Ĭavuto pushed back and presented Mullen with this scenario to demonstrate the limits of getting the wealthy to pony up. "If you wanted all that stuff, someone has to pick up the tab," Cavuto asked on his Nov. Cavuto pressed Keely Mullen with the Million Student March on how she would pay for a program to make public college tuition-free, forgive all current college debt and pay college students $15 an hour. Fox Business Network host Neil Cavuto put a college organizer in the hot seat when she came on his show to talk about the need to reduce college debt.
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