Yesterday, former Congressional Budget Office and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag had a piece in The New York Times claiming that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is an essential element to keeping future health care costs down. Worried that Republicans will make good on Election Night vows to repeal ObamaCare, Orszag's basic argument in summed up in his commentary's headline: "To Save Money, Save the Health Care Act."
He writes: “Sure, the health care law is not perfect, but it would cut the nation’s long-term fiscal imbalance by a quarter and reduce the projected deficit within Medicare by three-quarters. That may seem fanciful, given how distorted the public discussion has become. But that’s what the projections show, as long as Congress sticks to its guns and the Obama administration does a good job carrying out the provisions of the law.”
However, Orszag's article amounts to little more than wishful thinking. Using Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data, the chart above shows that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 have left the cost curve of federal healthcare spending virtually unchanged over the next 25 years.
Read More...
0 comments:
Post a Comment