Health care reform, if enacted, is going to be expensive -- estimates range from around $1 trillion for a plan introduced by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) to $1.6 trillion or more for other proposals -- so the Obama Administration has come up with a list of $948 billion in savings it claims can be obtained by enacting such changes:
- Some $309 billion in reduced costs from the Medicare and Medicaid programs and $326 billion in additional revenue that will come from such things as raising taxes on families earning more than $250,000 a year.
- The Medicare and Medicaid savings include such things as assumed improvements in patient care and reduced hospitalization rates, as well as reduced Medicare payments to private insurers.
- The Administration added to that an estimate of $313 billion more it feels can be saved through such things as 'productivity adjustments' to Medicare and Medicaid, reduced hospital subsidies and by paying less on Medicare Part D, the prescription-drug program.
"Because this is a complex system, it is very hard to believe how all this new spending will affect the system as a whole. But we can be fairly confident total spending will rise -- and probably by a lot -- No matter what else happens, if I and my doctors don't change what we are doing for me and you and your doctors don't change what is being done for you….. and so forth….. aggregate spending will not change."
[Much like AWG, the professed goal is cover: the current plans having nothing to do with improving health care in America and everything to do with the government seizing control over it: there is no better mechanism to control the populace than by controlling their health care.]
READ MORE
No comments:
Post a Comment