WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has promised that seniors wouldn’t lose any Medicare benefits in a health-care overhaul, despite his proposal to use the savings from correcting Medicare “inefficiencies” to help pay for extending health coverage to most Americans.

That sentiment was echoed by Rep. Baron Hill, D-Seymour, in a call Monday night with more than 5,000 AARP members in his southeastern Indiana district: “If you have Medicare now, your benefits are not going to be reduced,” he said.

But the statements didn’t add up for at least one listener, identified as Joe from Floyds Knobs.

“How can we maintain the same amount of coverage and cut costs?” he asked.

Polls show seniors are the most likely to report being confused by the health-care debate and are more likely than other age groups to think Medicare, the government-funded health program for the elderly, will be worse off under any health-care reform.

“They are hearing both positive and negative things about how it will affect them, and they are not sure what to believe,” said Mollyann Brodie, Kaiser Family Foundation vice president and director of public opinion and survey research for the health policy research group. “Whether they will support any final proposal remains unclear and may depend heavily on what the specifics are and whether any sweeteners for seniors are included in the bill.”

One possible sweetener is a promise by drug makers to cut the costs of drugs for seniors affected by the current gap in the Medicare drug benefit — the “doughnut hole” between the initial coverage limit and the catastrophic coverage limit.

But that benefit appears to be resonating far less with seniors than concerns about what they might have to give up and fears caused by misinformation.

The House bill, for example, would allow Medicare to pay for voluntary end-of-life counseling discussions if seniors wish to make decisions about the type of treatments they want at the end of their lives. Opponents have said that will encourage euthanasia.

“The dialogue and debate around this issue has been, in a lot of cases, pretty misleading and uninformative for a lot of average citizens, who may be hearing these sound bites about ‘death panels’ and rationed care that cause them fear and concern and anxiety,” said June Lyle, state director of AARP Indiana. “But there’s not as much information out there in terms of what value health-care reform could bring to them and their families.”

AARP Indiana, which has about 972,000 members, has stepped up its involvement in the issue. In addition to hosting the call with Hill, the group has had regular meetings on health care with its volunteers and will be making presentations to AARP chapters and hanging literature on doorknobs across Indiana. Hoosiers might see some of the ads the national organization is running on national cable stations to dispel what they say are some of the myths in the debate. Indiana AARP is spending $260,000 on print and radio ads in Indiana.

But AARP is facing resistance. The group has acknowledged that about 60,000 senior citizens nationally have quit AARP since July over the issue.

“We hear from our members on both sides of this issue. We get some folks saying, ‘Fantastic! This is wonderful!’ " Lyle said. "We have other folks who say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. This is not something that I can support.’ "

Republicans are reacting to seniors’ concerns. The Republican National Committee announced Monday a “Seniors’ Health Care Bill of Rights.” The tenets include that Medicare should not be cut to help pay for expanding health coverage to everyone.

Changes the president has proposed that would cut costs include:

Cutting subsidies private insurers get for offering Medicare Advantage plans, alternatives to the regular Medicare program.

Private insurers are paid 14 percent more per patient for plans that can include benefits not part of regular Medicare such as vision care and free gym memberships. The Obama administration wants to use competitive bidding among private insurers seeking to offer Medicare Advantage plans, a change that could save taxpayers more than $150 billion over 10 years. Critics say the change would result in fewer benefits and higher premiums and in some companies dropping their Medicare Advantage plans. The AARP has backed the change, arguing that requiring Medicare Advantage plans to compete with each other would encourage higher-quality care at lower prices.

Reducing Medicare payments to hospitals with high readmission rates, which could save $5 billion to $10 billion over 10 years.

The government argues that many readmissions are preventable and hospitals need to be prodded to improve care. The American Hospital Association backs the change as part of its pledge to cut $155 billion in hospital costs over 10 years.

Creating an independent council to rein in Medicare spending.

While there’s already an advisory panel that makes recommendations to Congress, lawmakers typically haven’t gone along with changes that would require cuts in payment rates for treating seniors. A key change under the proposed plan would make it harder for Congress to stop the recommendations on cutting costs and improving quality.

Gail Wilensky, who chaired the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission from 1997 to 2001, said it’s not clear how much Medicare would be changed under the proposals; there are ways to cut “low-value” spending, but other cuts might affect senior care.

“It depends very much on how these changes are implemented.”

The irony in the debate, according to some experts, is that the changes to Medicare being talked about are modest compared with the tough choices the nation will soon face.

If there are no changes, the increased government cost for senior care is two or three times as much as the estimated $1 trillion cost of providing health care to most Americans, according to Gene Steuerle, vice president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a nonpartisan group that focuses on the nation’s economic challenges. By 2030, the cost of Medicare is estimated to be the equivalent of a 14 percent tax on wage earners.

“Leaving Medicare alone in an open-ended budget with little constraints on what’s provided in the way of services . . . just doesn’t work,” Steuerle said. “It’s not a sustainable system.”