Tom Coburn

A bipartisan Congressional committee will be tasked with reforming entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, as part of a federal debt limit deal signed yesterday by President Obama.

Providers immediately ripped a new deficit-reduction proposal Tuesday that was announced by a bipartisan group of influential U.S. Senators and endorsed at least modestly by both the White House and some key Republicans. The nearly complete proposal, cobbled together within two weeks of the United States possibly starting to default on its financial obligations, would slash numerous areas of healthcare spending and eliminate the nation's first government-sponsored long-term care insurance program.

A new plan to change Medicare would raise the eligibility age to 67 and boost premiums for current beneficiaries, saving the federal government an estimated $600 billion over the next decade.

A commission charged with finding ways to reduce the deficit last week voted against proposals that recommend killing the CLASS Act and increasing the Social Security retirement age.

Senate Republicans have introduced legislation that would repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) that is part of the healthcare reform law.