Posts Tagged ‘health spending’
Health Care News
Health care spending actually didn’t skyrocket in 2011–but just wait.
This week, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Office of the Actuary released the National Health Expenditures report for 2011. The report shows that growth in national health spending remained relatively low in 2011, growing at 3.9 percent.
Overall, the U.S. spent $2.7 trillion on health care in 2011, which accounts for 17.9 percent of total gross domestic product (GDP).
There are four major takeaways from the report:
- A slow economic recovery played a role. The slow growth in health spending correlates with overall slow growth in incomes, jobs, and GDP in 2011. As the report explains, this “raises questions about whether US health care spending will rebound over the next few years as it typically has after past economic downturns.”
Tags: Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, economic downturn, health spending, National Health Expenditures report, ObamaCare, Office of the Actuary, slow growth
Health Care News
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its Budget and Economic Outlook for years 2012 to 2022 yesterday, and as Heritage’s Patrick Knudsen shows, the numbers add up to a dismal fiscal future. As the government continues its fiscal irresponsibility, 2012 will be the fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits. This trend is on track to continue as a result of increasing federal spending on health care, which will more than double between 2012 and 2022.
The CBO estimates that by 2022, the government will spend $1.8 trillion on health care, 7.3 percent of our total economy. CBO breaks down the portions of the spending each program will account for: “Rising spending for Medicare accounts for about one-half of that growth, rising spending for Medicaid accounts for roughly one-third, and the remaining growth stems primarily from the new subsidies to be provided through health insurance exchanges beginning in 2014.”
Medicare Spending
As the population ages and health care costs continue their upward trend, Medicare spending will become unsustainable. CBO projects that “gross Medicare outlays in 2022 will exceed $1 trillion, almost 90 percent more than they are expected to be this year.” But that projection includes cuts to Medicare reimbursements for doctors and hospitals included in current law that are highly unlikely to happen. For example, doctor payment reductions are scheduled to be cut by 27 percent under the flawed sustainable growth rate (SGR). This affects the CBO’s baseline greatly: (Read the rest on The Foundry…)
Tags: budget, CBO estimate, health spending, HHS, Medicare
Heritage Research
Medicare is rushing towards fiscal disaster. Heritage’s Greg D’Angelo and Robert Moffit, Ph.D. lay out the facts:
“Within three years, the first wave of the gigantic baby boom generation will start to retire and impose a demand on medical services unprecedented in the nation’s history. The traditional Medicare program is not capable of absorbing such a shock without some fundamental changes…Medicare’s long-term unfunded obligation–the benefits promised but unpaid for–totals $37.8 trillion, or more than two-and-a-half times the current size of the entire U.S. economy.”
In fact, expenditures out of Medicare Part A—the part that pays hospital bills—are expected to exceed revenues in just eight years.
As D’Angelo and Moffit explain, The Congressional Budget Office has found that the policies in Democrats’ proposals aimed at controlling skyrocketing Medicare expenditures “are unlikely to deliver the level of savings hoped for.” Worse still, most of the savings “are not dedicated to reduce [Medicare’s] obligations but rather siphoned off to financing Obama’s health care agenda.”
Experts at The Heritage Foundation have worked with scholars from The Brookings Institution and other prominent think tanks across the ideological spectrum to address this urgent problem. The scholars recommend that:
“-Congress and the president enact explicit long-term budgets for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security that are sustainable, set limits on automatic spending growth, and reduce the relatively favorable budgetary treatment of these programs compared with other types of expenditures.
-The programs be reviewed on a regular schedule by the Social Security and Medicare Trustees or the Congressional Budget Office to determine whether they will remain within budgeted amounts.
-Significant long-term deviations from budgeted amounts trigger automatic adjustments in benefits, premiums, provider payments, or other revenues. These adjustments could only be over-ridden by an explicit vote of Congress and acceptance by the president.”
Tags: CBO, entitlements, health spending, Medicare
Health Care News
Sen. Judd Gregg asks Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf about health care bill’s long-term effects.
Tags: burden, health spending, long-term
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