FixHealthCarePolicy

Capretta: It’s $1.5 Trillion, Not $900 Billion

While many media reports are putting the 10-year cost for the new House health care reform bill at $894 billion, health care economist James Capretta points out the figure is “highly misleading.”

“For starters, the gross cost of expanded Medicaid coverage and a new entitlement to subsidies for health insurance is much higher than Democrats are suggesting,” according to the latest estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, Capretta writes in National Review’s Critical Condition. 

When you look at the gross spending increases from entitlement expansions for programs like Medicaid, the House bill tab comes to $1.055 trillion over 10 years, not $894 billion, Capretta notes.

Plus, “House Democrats have conveniently decided to take the so-called ‘doc fix’ out of the larger health-care bill and pass it along as a standalone measure, at a cost of $250 billion over 10 years.”

When you tally up the budget gimmicks, Capretta found the total cost for Congress’ health overhaul was a $1.5 trillion spending program, which far surpassed President Barack Obama’s $900 billion limit for health reform. Congress will plans to deal with the costs through higher taxation, passing other costs onto the country’s already-ballooning debt and cutting private Medicare benefits, Capretta writes. 

He goes further into the harm cutting Medicare Advantage (as detailed in the Senate Finance Committee bill) would have in a new Heritage Web Memo co-authored with Robert Book.

Tags: $1.055 trillion, HR 3962, Medicaid