The Congressional Budget Office said on Wednesday that the
Finance Committee's health care bill would reduce the deficit by
$81 billion over 10
years, but that analysis assumes that future lawmakers will
follow through on the Medicare cuts proposed in the legislation.
And as the CBO acknowledged, historically Congress has not
followed through on cuts to government programs.
"These projections assume that the proposals are enacted and
remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often
not the case for major legislation," the CBO noted. "For example,
the sustainable growth rate (SGR) mechanism governing Medicare's
payments to physicians has frequently been modified (either
through legislation or administrative action) to avoid reductions
in those payments."
Writing for Investor's Business Daily, David Hogberg
reminds us:
The SGR is a formula put into law in the late 1990s that is
supposed to trigger automatic cuts in Medicare payments to
physicians if those payments grow too quickly....
But physicians groups have opposed the SGR since 2003 and
successfully pushed Congress to suspend the cuts every year
since.
No wonder they don't want people to get the chance to read the
final legislation. What a crock.
Martin j smith| 10.9.09 @ 8:02AM
I do not understand why the CBO even looked at the so called
"legislation" in the first place--since it is not a bill at all
yet..EXCEPT--that Obama 'shenchmen did strong arm twisting. And
by the way--lets see the bill.
So once again the so called non partisan CBO has lost credibility
for me.
…argue that their health care legislation would cost less than $900 billion over 10 years and not add to deficits. Their tactics include promising cuts to government programs that future lawmakers are unlikely to actually enact and moving $247 billion of spending on Medicare doctors’ payments to a separate bill while claiming that it has nothing to do with health care (even the Washington Post editorialized that this…
Pete| 10.8.09 @ 8:00PM
No wonder they don't want people to get the chance to read the final legislation. What a crock.
Martin j smith| 10.9.09 @ 8:02AM
I do not understand why the CBO even looked at the so called "legislation" in the first place--since it is not a bill at all yet..EXCEPT--that Obama 'shenchmen did strong arm twisting. And by the way--lets see the bill.
So once again the so called non partisan CBO has lost credibility for me.
Pingback| 10.21.09 @ 6:26PM
Baucus’s Accounting Trick « Right Sided American Kafir links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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