Medicare SAVED 315 BILLION Dollars

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/16/8424139/medicare-just-saved-more-than-10-times-the-combined-cost-of-amtrak

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/16/8424139/medicare-just-saved-more-than-10-times-the-combined-cost-of-amtrak

Less Medicare spending leaves more money for other things

This may overstate the obvious, but $316 billion is a pretty astounding amount of money. It works out to a 12 percent reduction in Medicare spending in the time period studied (from an expected $2.87 trillion down to an actual $2.55 trillion).
Those savings are meaningful: when the government spends less money on Medicare, it frees up dollars to spend more money on education or defense or whatever other priorities the administration wants to invest in. Over four years, $316 billion could, for example, cover federal spending for the Children's Health Insurance Program (which covers about 8 million low- and middle-income kids) about nine times over. Or it could cover the entire Education Department's budget, without spending any more money.
This is what makes the spending slowdown in health care so meaningful for the federal government: it suggests that Medicare, a program typically seen as a budget-buster, may not be the juggernaut we thought.