Yesterday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released its new projections of national health spending trends through 2020. The findings, which estimate health care spending to reach more than $4 trillion by 2020, come as no surprise: Runaway spending has overtaken the United States health care system and is on the rise. More notably, the study confirms Obamacare does not “bend the cost curve” but only increases government’s share of spending in the health care system instead. Already, the White House has tried to spin the report as …
Earlier this year, Richard Foster, the Chief Actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), issued a report projecting that about half of all seniors and disabled Americans enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans will be pushed out of that program due to the new health care reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). In response to a request from Sen. Charles Grassley (R–IA) and three other Republican Senators, Foster recently confirmed that in addition to losing access to the health plan of their choice, those …
The Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) just updated national health spending projections as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). While many of its estimates are disconcerting, one estimate in particular is eye-popping and will be unwelcome news to the states: CMS projects that state and local spending on Medicaid will increase 41.4 percent between 2010 and 2011. No, that is not a typo. Medicaid spending now represents on average about 21 percent of the typical state budget. …
Last week the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released the final cost projections for Obamacare, finding that, contrary to White House claims, the legislation will increase national health spending by $311 billion over the next decade and will cause 14 million Americans to lose their current employer-based health coverage. President Barack Obama unleashed his staff to attack Foster’s work. Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, and White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer downplayed and criticized Foster’s analysis on the White House website. As …
Yesterday, the actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that runs the giant entitlement programs, released their analysis of the new health care law. The AP reports that “White House officials have repeatedly complained that such analyses have been too pessimistic and lowball the law’s potential to achieve savings,” but the official CMS analysis reinforces several of Heritage’s predictions regarding Obamacare. Some highlights of the CMS report: Mandates Without Impact. Writes CMS, “For many individuals, the penalty amounts for not having insurance coverage were not …
At his impromptu press conference yesterday, President Barack Obama again defended his health care plan this time claiming: I don’t know if people noted, because during the health care debate everybody was saying the President is trying to take over — a government takeover of health care. I don’t know if anybody noticed that for the first time this year you saw more people getting health care from government than you did from the private sector — not because of anything we did, but because more and more people are …
For the past several months, Washington has exhausted every possible method to pass a health care bill designed to increase government’s control over health care. They haven’t been successful yet, but that may not matter: even without Obamacare, government health spending is set to increase far faster than private health expenditures, surpassing the private sector as soon as 2012. Today the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released its projections of national health expenditures for the next ten years. The report shows that spending by the public sector grew much …
New analysis confirms that the health care bills moving the House and Senate will break the many promises President Obama made to the American people. As the details of the legislation are exposed, it is no wonder that Americans are growing uneasy over the direction the legislation has taken. The Chief Actuary for the President’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued an extensive analysis of the pending Reid bill and House-passed bill. The Lewin Group also released an analysis of the House and Senate bills. These reports provide …
Last month, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) rammed through her version of Obamacare almost a week before the agency in charge of running Medicare and Medicaid, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMMS), could issue its non-partisan and independent analysis of the legislation. And for supporters of the President’s plan, it’s a good thing she did. The CMMS report eviscerated almost every single promise the President has made about his health care plan. According to that report, Obamacare: 1) raises health care costs; 2) causes millions of Americans to lose …
This week the Commonwealth Fund released a report purporting to explain, as the title says, “Why Health Reform Will Bend the Cost Curve.” It is an exercise in pure, unsubstantiated speculation. They resurrect the long-discredited claim that the bill passed by the House and a somewhat similar but different bill currently before the Senate would not only slow the rate of growth in health care spending, but would reduce average family premiums. Ironically, most of the sources of alleged “cost savings” cited in the report are due to factors that …
