Articles
Seven Policies To Reduce Medicare Spending And Shrink The Federal Deficit
We asked Medicare policy experts to write up proposals that save taxpayers ~$100 billion over ten years. Here’s what they came up with.
October 20, 2026
Published March 16, 2026
During COVID-19, physicians who questioned official mandates on lockdowns, school closures, and vaccines faced censorship and professional retaliation — silencing scientific debate at the moment it mattered most. As a result, trust in doctors and hospitals fell from 72% in 2019 to 40% by 2024.
The connection is direct: when government mandates displace physician judgment and informed consent, public trust erodes. Rebuilding it requires restoring the primacy of doctor-patient decision-making and the freedom to follow evidence over directives.
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The opinions expressed in this video are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Hoover Institution or Stanford University.
© 2026 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University.
Articles
We asked Medicare policy experts to write up proposals that save taxpayers ~$100 billion over ten years. Here’s what they came up with.
October 20, 2026
Essays
General revenue now funds about half of Medicare. This brief proposes replacing Medicare Part B’s five IRMAA (Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount) premium tiers with a linear ramp that ends the taxpayer subsidy at $250,000 of income for single seniors and $500,000 for couples. The reform raises up to $113 billion over 10 years, removes premium cliffs to smooth out marginal tax rates, and leaves premiums unchanged for roughly 90% of Part B enrollees.
October 20, 2026
Traditional Medicare’s cost-sharing structure has not changed since 1965. Beneficiaries face separate Part A and Part B deductibles, per-day hospital copays, no coinsurance on certain services, and no annual out-of-pocket cap. This brief lays out reform templates proposed by the Simpson-Bowles Commission, the Congressional Budget Office, and others, compares a decade of budget scores, and analyzes a pending Senate bill that would add a spending cap without the offsetting cost-saving reforms.
October 20, 2026