Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its 2016 10-year budget projections last month and the numbers do not look good. CBO estimates that the 2016 federal budget deficit will be more than half a trillion dollars ($544 billion), which will cause the total level of federal government debt to increase to 76% of GDP. How…
Like most years, in recent history, the Congressional Budget Office’s 2014 Long-term Budget Outlook is not rosy. Between 2009 and 2012, the federal government recorded the largest budget deficits relative to the size of the economy since 1946, causing its debt to soar. The total amount of federal debt held by the public is now…
Will the Affordable Care Act (aka ACA, aka Obamacare) cost American millions of jobs. A recent report by the CBO says yes. CBO estimates that the ACA will reduce the total number of hours worked, on net, by about 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent during the period from 2017 to 2024, almost entirely because workers…
California Healthline reports that At least one million fewer people than previously expected are projected to obtain health insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges this year, primarily because of the troubled rollout of the federal health insurance exchange website last fall, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s new annual budget outlook report. WonkBlog has a…
In January, the CBO released a report titled The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2010 to 2020. A summary of the findings is available on the CBO Director’s blog. Today, however, I focus on CBO’s evaluation of how changes in health care spending affect the federal budget. “Medicaid spending (excluding stimulus funding) increased by…
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) periodically releases its 75-year health care spending projections. Current projections forecast the following health care spending levels: Total spending on health care would rise from 16% of GDP in 2007 to 25% in 2025, 37% in 2050 and 49% in 2082. Federal spending on Medicare (net of beneficiaries premiums) and…
In the Health Care Blog, Robert Laszewski suberbly analyzes Congressional Budget Office (CBO)’s two papers. His key points are that 1) there is no silver bullet and 2) “really controlling costs will be very hard and will require some courageous and politically problematic actions.” I would point out other highlights, but the post is so…