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 …
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), charged with implementing Obamacare, is running into a classic marketing problem: The dogs won’t eat the dog food. So HHS officials recently announced that they are “rebranding” one of Obamacare’s major components; henceforth they will replace the word exchange with marketplace. HHS …
Betsy McCaughey’s opening chapter of her new book says it all: Obamacare is here to stay, at least in the near future. With that thought in mind, the constitutional scholar, patient advocate, and former New York lieutenant governor will join us at tomorrow’s Bloggers Briefing to share her secrets for …
Months since the Supreme Court ruling that made the Obamacare Medicaid expansion optional, the state costs associated with expansion still remain highly uncertain—making expansion a dicey course for states and their budgets. Indeed, states should not lose sight of the fact that the original Medicaid expansion was coercive for a …
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. …
Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gave seven more states “conditional approval” to operate state-run Obamacare exchanges. The announcement came two days after the deadline for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to determine which states will be ready to run their own exchanges in 2014. So it …
The editorial board of The Washington Post, no organ of conservative opinion, is absolutely right: “Medicare as we know it is not sustainable,” and the “ultimate solution” is structural reform. Bingo. The right structural reform is to expand Medicare’s defined-contribution financing (routinely called “premium support”) as it broadly exists today …
Though the government’s entitlement spending is still spiraling out of control, taxpayers have finally caught a break: The recently passed “fiscal cliff” deal included the repeal of one of Obamacare’s worst provisions, the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act. The CLASS Act was a new entitlement program included …
