Designed to Fail

The President's Medicare plan contains nothing innovative or new, and does not change the structure of the program. Instead, it focuses on providers, adjusting payments and adding utilization hurdles without changing financial incentives. Most of the ideas were swept up from the CBO budget options book, so they score as savings. The provider cuts are not painless, but also not unexpected. Increasing premiums and cost-sharing is delayed until 2017, which makes no budget or policy sense but plenty of political sense. That adds up to acceptance by the "super" committee. However, if the tax changes are included, the package will fail to be enacted even though Congress could support the Medicare pieces. That gives Obama what he wants: an election-year debating point without having to sign even routine health spending reductions into law.

Joseph Antos is the Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy at AEI

 

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About the Author

 

Joseph
Antos

  •  


    Mr. Antos's research focuses on the economics of health policy—including Medicare and broader health system reform, health care financing, health insurance regulation, and the uninsured—and federal budget policy. He has written and spoken extensively on the Medicare drug benefit and has led a team of experienced independent actuaries and cost estimators in a study to evaluate various proposals to extend health coverage to the uninsured. His work on the country’s budget crisis includes a detailed plan to achieve fiscal stability and economic growth developed in conjunction with AEI colleagues.  


    Joseph Antos is also a health adviser to the Congressional Budget Office and recently completed two terms as a commissioner of the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission.  Before joining AEI, Mr. Antos was Assistant Director for Health and Human Resources at the Congressional Budget Office and held senior positions in the U.S.Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Management and Budget, and the President’s Council of economic Advisers.


     



    Watch Mr. Antos in an interview with Bill Erwin of the Alliance for Health Reform on "Will Health Reform Reduce the Federal Deficit?"


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    Email: jantos@aei.org
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Tuesday, August 06, 2013 | 12:00 p.m. – 1:30 p.m.
Uniting universal coverage and personal choice: A new direction for health reform

Join some of the authors, along with notable health scholars from the left and right, for the release of “Best of Both Worlds: Uniting Universal Coverage and Personal Choice in Health Care,” and a new debate over the priorities and policies that will most effectively reform health care.

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