The government can’t manage to control the laws of economics like it used to.
No surprise here, but according to a new study released by the non-partisan Center for Medicare and Medicaid Studies, the House health care bill will increase health care costs by $289 billion in the next ten years.
As much as the White House talked about “bending the health care cost curve” downward, the House health care bill, H.R.3962, does the exact opposite.
For some reason the Administration can’t understand that more government spending on health care without commensurate gains in supply leads to health care inflation, driving up costs for all consumers.
Other highlights from the report:
By calendar year 2019, the mandates, coupled with the Medicaid expansion, would reduce the number of uninsured from 57 million, as projected under current law, to an estimated 23 million under H.R. 3962.
The estimated effects of H.R. 3962 on overall national health expenditures (NHE) are shown in table 5. In aggregate, we estimate that for calendar years 2010 through 2019 NHE would increase by $289 billion, or 0.8 percent, over the updated baseline projection that was released on June 29, 2009… The NHE share of GDP is projected to be 21.1 percent in 2019, compared to 20.8 percent under current law.
Public spending would increase under H.R. 3962 as a result of the expansion of the Medicaid program and other Medicaid changes, less the net Medicare savings under the bill. Private expenditures would be higher as well…