Health Care Reform to Help Medicare Solvency

the new health care reform law can extend the solvency of Medicare for years

Social security will dole out more benefits than it will accept this year due to payroll taxes during this economic downturn, but the new health care reform law can extend the solvency of Medicare for years, according to government reports issued Thursday.

But the good scenario will only happen if Congress and the Obama administration will fully implement planned cuts, which lawmakers opposed in recent years, said Richard Foster, Medicare actuary.

The two reports about the entitlement programs comes after the new law was passed in March, and Foster reported that Medicare’s basic hospital insurance program is in better shape than last year because of some cost-cutting measures introduced in the bill.

The solvency of the hospital insurance program now has a 12-year improvement, and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pointed it out clearly.

"These are very, very, very substantial improvements in the rate of growth in health care costs that make a very substantial improvement in our long-term fiscal position - much, much larger than anything we have considered, much less embraced, as a country over the last several decades," said the secretary.

Opponents however also pointed out that the aging population of patients will drive medical costs up and there is little that the new health care reform law can do to keep Medicare afloat in the coming years. They also criticized the Obama administration for spending the savings on other programs instead of putting it back to Medicare funding for the program’s benefit.

"This supposed extension is nothing more than an accounting gimmick," said Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, chairman of the Republican Study Committee. "The money is not in the Medicare bank account because Democrats have already spent it elsewhere. Even Washington cannot spend the same dollar twice."

Posted by George Daniels on Friday August 06 2010, 11:01 AM EDT. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Featured News, Health. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0