Fix Health Care Policy

Five Health Care Takeaways from CBO’s Report

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its Budget and Economic Outlook for 2013–2023 today. Here are five major takeaways:

1)      Health care entitlement spending is bypassing all other spending. Spending on Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare subsidies, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program will be greater than all other spending—including Social Security and defense spending: “Spending for major health care programs will be nearly 5 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] in 2013, and such spending is projected to grow rapidly when provisions of [Obamacare] are fully implemented by middecade, reaching 6.2 percent of GDP in 2023.”

2)      Obamacare still costs well over a trillion dollars. Obamacare is still projected to have a gross cost of over $1.6 trillion from 2013 to 2022—which only includes nine years of full implementation because the major provisions, exchange subsidies, and Medicaid expansion don’t begin until 2014. This spending should be stopped before it starts.

Read the rest on The Foundry…

Tags: bad policies, CBO, health entitlement spending, report, trillion dollars, uninsured

Brace for Larger Deficits as Lawmakers Rethink Health Care Law’s Medicare Cuts

Obamacare will cost Americans trillions of dollars in the decades to come. To help pay for its new coverage provisions, the plan makes sweeping cuts to Medicare. But as it turns out, serious doubts exist about the likelihood of these cuts actually occurring, and evidence has already shown that lawmakers may shy away from some of the cuts. If the planned savings don’t materialize, the health care overhaul will add even more to deficit spending than already expected, further jeopardizing the nation’s fiscal future.

Both the director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Medicare Chief Actuary warn that Medicare cuts made by Obamacare will be difficult to sustain in the long term. (Read the rest at The Foundry…)

Tags: Congressional Budget Office, cuts in Medicare, long-term costs, ObamaCare, trillion dollars