RNC Women

A report on the estimated effects of the new health care law released on Friday by the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services pulls the cover off of the Obama Administration’s claims that the law is fiscally responsible. 

According to the report, national health care expenditures are now expected to rise by $311 billion, and health care will account for 21% of our GDP by 2019.  The government will spend $410 billion to expand Medicaid, and enrollment in Medicaid is expected to increase by 20 million new beneficiaries.  If this is how President Obama intended to “bend the cost curve” it is going in the wrong direction. 

The report also showed that doctors may drop out of Medicare because of the changes in Medicare reimbursement rates and that the so-called Medicare "savings" may be difficult to achieve.  This is the true threat to our system that this new law represents.  Doctors all over the country were beginning to close their practices to Medicare patients because of federal red tape, inefficiency and reimbursement cuts.  The changes to Medicare in the bill will only make this situation worse, and make it harder and harder for Medicare patients to receive care. 

The spending contained in ObamaCare, and outlined in this new report prepared by the Obama Administration, is not sustainable.  The Obama Administration promised that the bill would provide more options for care.  Instead, it will provide less.  The Democrats promised that it would lower costs.  Instead, it will make them skyrocket. 

What this new report shows is that ObamaCare costs too much, covers too few and limits choices for the American people.  It’s time to get to work to elect a Republican Congress that will repeal and replace this bill with common-sense, bottom-up health care reform, and make the hard choices to bring spending under control.