The President’s deficit reduction plan includes a non-trivial swath of Medicare and Medicaid cuts, including some cuts for public health and prevention, as well as means testing and higher co-pays for certain services.

We’re told that most of the cuts are to providers. In fact, the largest portion of cuts comes from a rebate by drug manufacturers, basically forcing the drug companies to charge lower prices for their sales to Medicare.

The most dangerous plans I’ve seen coming out of the debt limit talks are chained CPI and the Medicaid blended rate. I’ve written extensively about chained CPI, which would cause a Social Security benefit cut of hundreds of dollars a year for the average beneficiary. The way that can be most easily combated is by calling it what it is – a tax increase. Only $100 billion of the $300 billion projected savings in chained CPI comes from Social Security; the other $200 billion comes from the effect of slowing the cost of living adjustment in other programs, including… tax brackets.

I don’t take Peter DeFazio’s carping about the health care bill entirely seriously. But his substantive argument – that Democratic leaders took out a Medicare reimbursement measure that would have changed geographic disparities – could shift other members of the caucus: “Unless they put that back in, I can’t support it,” Defazio said, referring to [...]

So basically, the President offers yet another set of olive branches to Republicans, which they will promptly throw on the ground and kick.