Bloggers are reacting to a Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services Chief Actuary report on the costs of the new health law and other health policy news.
The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein writes, “First, be clear about what’s being estimated. The Congressional Budget Office’s estimates look at the deficit. CMS is looking at total national health expenditures. This often confuses people into thinking that there’s conflict between the two sets of numbers when there isn’t … All in all, I think the report makes health-care reform look pretty good. A one percentage point increase in spending in return for covering 34 million people? That’s a good deal, I think. But your mileage may differ.”
Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey declares: “We’ve heard a lot of nonsense about ObamaCare and its fiscal discipline coming from its authors, advocates, and the national media. We’re finally starting to get the truth, but only after the bill became law. The electorate needs to punish all of those who voted for this disaster despite its deep unpopularity and work to defund it in the short term and repeal it when possible.”
Heritage’s Ernest Istook reacts: “Government actuaries—the official bean counters for national health care—just released the bad news from analyzing how President Obama’s new law affects medical costs and insurance. …Unfortunately, it is not unusual for politicians to promise one thing and then deliver something totally different. But the enormity of this law—re-shaping one-sixth of our economy—places Obama’s bait-and-switch in a class by itself.”
Time’s Kate Pickert writes, “This sounds pretty bad, right? Well, it is – if you consider it in a vacuum. The truth is the actuary who wrote the report, Richard S. Foster, authored a nearly identical report released January 8, 2010. Some of his figures changed in the interim – he wrote about the Senate bill in January and this week’s report includes changes made by the reconciliation package that altered the Senate bill – but overall, Foster’s assessment is the same. … The bottom line is that no one knows for sure if health reform will ‘bend the curve’ of increasing medical spending.”
The American Spectator’s Philip Klein looks at another study: the new Congressional Budget Office report that predicts four million people will end up paying a penalty for not obtaining insurance. Klein thinks the study underestimates the numbers: “To be clear, these numbers underestimate the full cost of the mandate. To start with, the estimates don’t include those Americans who will decide to purchase insurance in response to the mandate. If somebody otherwise wouldn’t choose to purchase insurance but because of the mandate ends up paying thousands of dollars in of premiums, that represents a cost, too. On the flip side, if CBO is overestimating those who will decide to purchase insurance, then it means that more will end up paying the penalty.”
John Goodman writes that, “Senior citizens are by far the biggest losers in health reform.”
Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky interviews health policy expert Peter Harbage about a Reuter’s story that insurer WellPoint specifically canceled policies of women diagnosed with breast cancer. Volsky writes, “Harbage says that there are at least three things lawmakers can do to strengthen the existing legislation: consumer education, prior review and data tracking. ‘Third party review of recissions is realistic. Having the state review every rescission before it’s made is something that could happen. At a minimum, you could have states track who’s being rescinded. They don’t even know when a rescission occurs. Regulators could be much more proactive in educating people about their rights. People generally have no idea where they can go or who they can turn to,’ Harbage said.”
Health economist Uwe Reinhardt takes a detailed look at taxation on the New York Times’ Economix. Reinhardt thinks increased taxes in the U.S. are inevitable, and declares: “So, my friends, get ready for the inevitable: Before this decade is out, whether you like it or not, the United States will have a value-added tax, just as they have long had in most of the world. The VAT will not be a substitute for the income tax (which, ideally, I wish it would be), but a complement to it, to supplement what can be had through income taxes.”
And last but not least, the Association of Health Care Journalists is blogging some of their annual conference at Covering Health.
