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Pasco County News | Breaking News

The astonishingly high cost of health care “reform”

Posted Nov 16, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Nov 16, 2009 at 02:08 PM

Cassie Smedile, U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite’s press secretary, alerts us to parallel reports from publications not ordinarily regarded as Republican-friendly, both concluding – as the GOP has asserted from the start – that Nancy Pelosi’s recently passed health care “reform” bill is bad news. Bad news for seniors, who will face benefits cuts and access to care (death panels, anyone?). And bad news for anyone sensitive to medical care price increases.

First, from the Washington Post’s Lisa Montgomery:

A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending – one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama’s proposed overhaul of the nation’s health-care system – would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday.

The report, requested by House Republicans, found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on Nov. 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether. …

More generally, the report questions whether the country’s network of doctors and hospitals would be able to cope with the effects of a reform package expected to add more than 30 million people to the ranks of the insured, many of them through Medicaid, the public health program for the poor.

In the face of greatly increased demand for services, providers are likely to charge higher fees or take patients with better-paying private insurance over Medicaid recipients, “exacerbating existing access problems” in that program, according to the report from Richard S. Foster of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Can you say “Medicare supplemental insurance coverage, marketed by reform-supporter AARP”? I thought you could.

In its most recent analysis of the House bill, the [Congressional Budget Office] noted that Medicare spending per beneficiary would have to grow at roughly half the rate it has over the past two decades to meet the measure’s savings targets, a dramatic reduction that many budget and health policy experts consider unrealistic.

“This report confirms what virtually every independent expert has been saying: [House] Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi’s health-care bill will increase costs, not decrease them,” said Rep. Dave Camp (Mich.), the senior Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. “This is a stark warning to every Republican, Democrat and independent worried about the financial future of this nation.”

Read the whole thing here.

Adding insult to potential injury, The Hill’s Molly K. Hooper reports, worrisomely, as follows:

The House-approved healthcare overhaul would raise the costs of healthcare by $289 billion over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

The CMS report is a blow to the White House and House Democrats who have vowed that healthcare reform would curb the growth of healthcare spending. …

[T]he CMS analysis clearly states that the House bill falls short in attaining a key goal of the Democrats’ effort to reform the nation’s healthcare system: “With the exception of the proposed reduction in Medicare ... the provisions of H.R. 3962 would not have a significant impact on future healthcare cost growth rates.”

The long-awaited report should serve as a “stark warning to every Republican, Democrat and Independent worried about the future of this nation,” Ways and Means Committee ranking member Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said in a statement on Saturday. …

“This report confirms what virtually every independent expert has been saying: Speaker Pelosi’s healthcare bill will increase costs, not decrease them. I hope my colleagues in the Senate heed CMS’ findings and refuse to rush ahead until any bill under consideration can be certified to actually reduce healthcare costs,” Camp said.

According to the 31-page report, the House-passed bill would increase costs, cut Medicare and expand Medicaid.

“In aggregate, we estimate that for calendar years 2010 through 2019 [national health expenditures] would increase by $289 billion,” the report notes. …

Camp said that the nonpartisan analysis demonstrates that the Democrats’ bill “does the opposite of everything they’ve been wanting to do” in terms of reducing overall health costs.

He added the CMS report shows that “this is not healthcare reform, this is entitlement expansion.”

Read the whole thing (and possibly weep) here.