The chief actuary of Medicare's report is proof that Sen. Harry Reid's plan for health reform will increase health care spending and add more people to an underfunded program, Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC) said Monday.
"When we had town meetings in August on health care, spending a lot for little result was their chief concern and this shows they were right. The Democrats want to spend $1 trillion on health care and not get everybody covered and not lower health care costs," Inglis said. "They need to admit it flat won't work and then we can start over."
Not only does it not lower costs, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) caution that the Senate plan appears to apply savings to both the Medicare trust fund and expanding coverage. The bill appears to extend the life of Medicare part A until 2026 from 2017. However, the report cautions that the savings needed to extend the trust fund cannot be simultaneously used to extend other health coverage provisions.
"So what we have is a plan to put ever more people onto the SS Medicare which is sinking under its own weight," Inglis said. "This just will not work. You would have to either charge the new members of Medicare higher premiums and have lower reimbursement rates for doctors or let the whole thing collapse under the weight of the unpaid costs."
The report was made prior to the Senate plan to add more people to Medicare by allowing those between the ages of 55 and 64 to buy into the program. The buy-in to Medicare provision was a compromise among Democrats in lieu of a public option.
The administration has already agreed that the House health care bill will increase health care costs. CMS Chief Actuary Richard Foster, estimated in October that "Total national health expenditures under [H.R. 3200] would increase by an estimated 2.7 percent in calendar year 2019."
Other highlights from the report on the Senate bill by the Chief Actuary for CMS include:
* Total national spending on health care would increase $234 billion (0.7%) between 2010-2019.
* Total federal expenditures on health care would increase $365.8 billion during that same time period.
* The bill would extend coverage to 33 million Americans by 2019 (18 million through Medicaid), but would still leave 24 million people uninsured (5 million of which would be illegals).
* The number of people with employer sponsored health care would drop by 5 million by 2019.