Here’s yet another installment in my preaching that congressional health care reform measures do nothing to address the reality that a troublingly huge amount of money is poured into the health care system.
The Hill has shared a memo from the Office of the Actuary for CMS (Medicare) expressing its evaluation of the net impact of the House reform bill.
The bottom line: increased utilization will more than offset some of the forced spending reductions, increasing the net national cost of health care paid by the country by 1.3%, or $289 billion, in 2019.
Quoting the memo:
[W]e estimate that most of the provisions of H.R. 3962 that were designed, in part, to reduce the rate of growth in health care costs would have a relatively small savings impact.[…] Total national health expenditures under this bill would increase by an estimated 1.3 percent in calendar year 2019, reflecting the net impact of (i) greater utilization of health care services by individuals becoming newly covered (or having more complete coverage), (ii) lower prices paid to health providers for the subset of those individuals who become covered by Medicaid, and (iii) lower payments and payment updates for Medicare services.
One bit of good news, at least – the bill does acknowledge a reduction to the projected budget deficit. We may end up spending more money on health care, but at least we will do a slightly better job of actually paying those bills, rather than just increasing the balance on Uncle Sam’s credit cards.
