The5thHorseman
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- Nov 22, 2022
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A Huge Threat to the U.S. Budget Has Receded. And No One Is Sure Why.
Roughly 85% under 2011 projections.
That, people, is BIG.
Some of the reductions are easy to explain. Congress changed Medicare policy. The biggest such shift came with the Affordable Care Act in 2010, which reduced Medicare’s payments to hospitals and to health insurers that offered private Medicare Advantage plans. Congress also cut Medicare payments as part of a budget deal in 2011...
Older Americans appear to be having fewer heart attacks and strokes, the likely result of effective cholesterol and blood pressure medicines that became cheap and widely used in recent years, according to research from Professor Cutler and colleagues. And drug makers and surgeons haven’t developed as many new blockbuster treatments recently — there has been no new Prozac or angioplasty to drive up spending. (Medicare is currently barred by statute from covering the new class of expensive anti-obesity drugs.)..
Medicare may even wind up saving money because of Covid-19 — because the older Americans who died from the disease tended to have other illnesses that would have been expensive to treat if they had survived, according to an analysis from the Medicare actuary....
If Medicare spending had grown the way it had for much of its history, federal spending would have been $3.9 trillion higher since 2011, and deficits would have been more than a quarter larger, according to an Upshot analysis. The difference is more than could be saved by raising the eligibility age for Social Security or converting Medicaid into a block grant, controversial proposals raised by legislators concerned about the federal debt.
From the looks of it, we have Obama and Biden to thank for much of the improvement......More Wages of Too Many Americans Working...
From the 2023 Medicare Trustees Report....
As figure III.B1 illustrates, HI income increased at a faster rate during
2011–2016 than HI expenditures, in contrast to the situation that has
prevailed during most of the program’s history. The recovery from the
economic recession (which ended in 2009) accelerated income growth
during this period. At the same time, the provider payment updates
mentioned previously slowed expenditure growth significantly. From
2017 through 2020, expenditure growth increased more rapidly than
income growth; however, a reversal occurred in 2021 and 2022 due to
repayment of the accelerated and advance payments and the slower
rebound in utilization in those years, along with higher payroll tax
income in 2022. Beginning in 2023, expenditure growth is expected to
reverse course again and increase more rapidly than income
throughout the projection period.
Obamacare Is Worse Than 9/11, Slavery, and the Holocaust—and Other GOP Talking Points
It is worth remembering this the next time you are told of the pending apocalypse.....
Roughly 85% under 2011 projections.
That, people, is BIG.
Some of the reductions are easy to explain. Congress changed Medicare policy. The biggest such shift came with the Affordable Care Act in 2010, which reduced Medicare’s payments to hospitals and to health insurers that offered private Medicare Advantage plans. Congress also cut Medicare payments as part of a budget deal in 2011...
Older Americans appear to be having fewer heart attacks and strokes, the likely result of effective cholesterol and blood pressure medicines that became cheap and widely used in recent years, according to research from Professor Cutler and colleagues. And drug makers and surgeons haven’t developed as many new blockbuster treatments recently — there has been no new Prozac or angioplasty to drive up spending. (Medicare is currently barred by statute from covering the new class of expensive anti-obesity drugs.)..
Medicare may even wind up saving money because of Covid-19 — because the older Americans who died from the disease tended to have other illnesses that would have been expensive to treat if they had survived, according to an analysis from the Medicare actuary....
If Medicare spending had grown the way it had for much of its history, federal spending would have been $3.9 trillion higher since 2011, and deficits would have been more than a quarter larger, according to an Upshot analysis. The difference is more than could be saved by raising the eligibility age for Social Security or converting Medicaid into a block grant, controversial proposals raised by legislators concerned about the federal debt.
From the looks of it, we have Obama and Biden to thank for much of the improvement......More Wages of Too Many Americans Working...
From the 2023 Medicare Trustees Report....
As figure III.B1 illustrates, HI income increased at a faster rate during
2011–2016 than HI expenditures, in contrast to the situation that has
prevailed during most of the program’s history. The recovery from the
economic recession (which ended in 2009) accelerated income growth
during this period. At the same time, the provider payment updates
mentioned previously slowed expenditure growth significantly. From
2017 through 2020, expenditure growth increased more rapidly than
income growth; however, a reversal occurred in 2021 and 2022 due to
repayment of the accelerated and advance payments and the slower
rebound in utilization in those years, along with higher payroll tax
income in 2022. Beginning in 2023, expenditure growth is expected to
reverse course again and increase more rapidly than income
throughout the projection period.
Obamacare Is Worse Than 9/11, Slavery, and the Holocaust—and Other GOP Talking Points
No, it’s worse than slavery or the Holocaust. How long can the GOP afford to call Obamacare evil?
It is worth remembering this the next time you are told of the pending apocalypse.....
