Baucus Bill Does Not Bend the Cost Curve
Greg D'Angelo /
A Lewin Group study commissioned by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, finds that although the Baucus health care bill (the legislation that recently passed the Senate Finance Committee) is often touted as the most fiscally responsible of all of Congress’s reform plans, it “relies on certain cost containment approaches that have not worked in the past” and therefore “does not bend the total health care cost curve downward.”
Rather than fundamentally realigning incentives in the health sector to lower the overall cost of care, the Baucus bill imposes top down cuts in payments to medical providers which will only serve to shift costs around the current system. Here are some of the other key findings from the Lewin study on the America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009 (S.1796):
- Adds to the Deficit. The bill would add to the federal deficit in the first ten years and beyond if it included a permanent “doc fix” to prevent cuts in Medicare payments to physicians under the Sustainable Growth Rate instead of only a one year temporary fix. Every year, Congress defers these reductions in pay to doctors but the bill creates false savings by pretending that Congress would suddenly let these cuts occur. More than $404 billion in savings over the first ten years are attributable to these savings– and reductions in uncompensated care funds for hospitals that treat the uninsured (DSH payments)– that are unlikely to fully materialize. (more…)