Fix Health Care Policy

Capretta: Insanity of the House Bill

Any hope for a health reform bill that would garner wide bipartisan support in Congress and accolades from the health care industries has been torpedoed by the latest House bill, HR 3962, according to respected health economist James Capretta, with the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

In the National Review’s Critical Condition, Capretta lays out the budget gimmicks and taxes that are central to the new legislation. “To sum it up, the House bill is nothing but a massive, uncontrolled federal entitlement expansion — at a time when central, looming threat to the nation’s long-term prosperity is the unaffordable health-care entitlements already on the federal books,” he writes.

Among the mentionable items in the bill that all Americans should be aware of:

– To say that the new House bill costs less, the new version lacks any repeal of the so-called “sustainable growth rate,” or payment formula for physicians treating Medicare patients. It’s scheduled to cut doctors’ fees by 20 percent next year. As Capretta notes, “Everyone knows it must be fixed, but the full, 10-year costs of repeal approaches $250 billion.” The Democrats’ solution is to repeal the cuts in a separate bill that doesn’t count toward the overall health reform tab.

– The bill massively expands Medicaid, the federal health program for the poor. Raising the eligibility limit to people making 150 above the federal poverty line will swell the program to 50 million Americans by 2019 (currently there are 35 million in Medicaid). This program already is costing most states billions of dollars and causing budget deficits. The Congressional Budget Office says the House bill increases Medicaid spending on an annual 8 percent level indefinitely.

– Payment-rate reductions in Medicaid and Medicare are not the health care efficiencies that Congress had promised. This will shift more health-care costs onto the middle class who are enrolled in private coverage while failing to slow down increasing health costs.

“There’s much else in this bill that would do great damage to the health sector and the American economy,” Capretta writes. “Heavy payroll taxes that will reduce low-wage employment. Mandates on employers that will drive up costs and reduce wages. Intrusive federal bureaucracies that will come between patients and doctors. They can do a lot of damage in nearly 2,000 pages.”

Tags: health care costs, House Bill, HR 3962, Medicaid, Medicare