Opponents of reform have long dismissed the possibility that the bills moving through Congress might actually reduce the cost of medical care. Now they're citing, as proof of their argument, a new analysis from Medicare's Office of the Actuary.
At the request of Congressional Republicans, the Office of Actuary (headed by Rick Foster) projected how the bill that recently passed the House of Representatives would affect insurance coverage, costs to the government, and overall national health spending.
The news on the first two fronts was actually pretty encouraging: Like the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Office of Actuary predicted the House bill would mean insurance coverage for nearly 34 million additional people, so that 93 percent of all residents--and a much higher percentage of legal residents--had coverage. While the Office of Actuary didn't formally project the net impact on the federal budget, because it didn't take into account new tax revenues, its numbers suggested that the program would in fact pay for itself over the ten-year budget planning window.
But it was the verdict on national health care spending that got much of the attention. The Office of Actuary predicted that, by enacting the House bill, the U.S. as a whole--including all public and private expenditures--would commit itself to spending an additional $280 billion on medical care over the next ten years. In other words, reform would mean the country is shelling out even more cash, not less, to pay for our health care.
That's obviously not great news. The judgment will, and should, be taken very seriously. But it's also important to put the finding in context.
