Health Care Reform updates

Study Concludes ACA Will Increase Deficit $340 Billion In The Next Decade.

The Washington Post  (4/10, Montgomery) reports the Affordable Care Act, “long touted as a means to control costs, will actually add more than $340 billion to the nation’s budget woes over the next decade, according to a new study by” Charles Blahous, a “conservative policy analyst whom Obama appointed in 2010 as one of two public trustees for” Medicare and Social Security. The Post says Blahous “challenges the conventional wisdom that the health-care law” will “reduce deficits by raising taxes and cutting payments to Medicare providers.” Blahous, senior research fellow at George Mason’s Mercatus Center, is quoted as saying, “If one asserts that this law extends the solvency of Medicare, then one is affirming that this law adds to the deficit.”

The AP  (4/10, Alonso-Zaldivar) reports, “Charles Blahous, who serves as public trustee overseeing Medicare and Social Security finances, also suggested that federal accounting practices have obscured the true fiscal impact of the” ACA. Yet, “the Congressional Budget Office, the government’s non-partisan fiscal umpire, said in an estimate last year that repealing the law actually would increase deficits by $210 billion from 2012-2021.” And “the White House dismissed the study in a statement late Monday.”