According to a new report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the health care reform bill would cost $289 billion over the next 10 years. Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives asked CMS to prepare the report.
To pay for the health care system overhaul, Medicare would be reduced by over $500 billion, which in turn would reduce benefits for seniors enrolled in Medicare and impact access for millions of Americans.
The report also concluded that hospitals and long term care providers like acute care hospitals and skilled nursing facilities may end up refusing to take Medicare patients, as the cost would be too great. The report’s findings are intuitive. The health care system overhaul inevitably would raise costs and reduce benefits. Providers would charge higher fees and may give private insurance patients priority over Medicare patients.
House Minority Leader John Boehner said in a written statement: “This report once again discredits Democrats’ assertions that their $1.3 trillion government takeover of health care will lower costs, and it confirms that this bill violates President Obama’s promise to ‘bend the cost curve.’ It’s now beyond dispute that their bill will raise costs, which is exactly what the American people don’t want.”
Download the 31-page report, which includes several tables of data.
(Source: The Hill)
