Nobody is talking about reducing Medicare benefits, except the lawmakers on Capitol Hill who have proposed to cut roughly $150 billion from the highly popular Medicare Advantage program, which now enrolls about one out of five senior citizens. These plans in this program provide Medicare patients with richer and more varied benefits than those in traditional Medicare. There are a lot of options the government can do to reign in spending for Medicare, which currently is $38 trillion in the red. But any savings need to go toward lowering Medicares long-term cost — not creating a new government-run health care program.