Medicare Chief Actuary called Obamacare budgetary projections 'implausible'

By Arlen Williams

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (cms.gov), principal and official federal source for independent actuarial analysis, exposed a good deal of the deception of Obamacare's false-front budget in April of this year.

See this memorandum, from Richard S. Foster, Chief Actuary, for the Department of Health & Human Services, dated April 22, 2010. Subject: Estimated Financial Effects of the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," as Amended (link to .pdf file).

John C. Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, on August, 9, reported the following, in their Daily Policy Digest.

Medicare Chief Actuary Disavows Trustees' Report, Publishes an Alternative Report

For the first time in Medicare history, the Medicare Chief Actuary has called the projections in a Medicare Trustees Report "unreasonable" and "implausible" and encouraged everyone to ignore them and view instead an "Illustrative Alternative" report, says John C. Goodman, President, CEO and the Kellye Wright Fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.

The alternative opens this way:

"The Trustees Report is necessarily based on current law; as a result of questions regarding the operations of certain Medicare provisions, however, the projections shown in the report do not represent the 'best estimate' of actual future Medicare expenditures."


• Noting that the formal Trustees report assumes Medicare physician fees will be reduced by 30 percent over the next three years, Chief Actuary Richard Foster says that's "implausible."
  
  
• In addition, the Trustees report assumes Medicare fees will fall below Medicaid rates by 2019 and fall further and further behind private payment rates in future years.
  
  
As explained in an April 22 report by Foster, the health reform law will cause:


• Cuts in Medicare spending of $575 billion over the next decade.
  
  
• 7½ million members of Medicare Advantage plans to lose their coverage and cause another 7½ million to face higher premiums and benefit cuts.
  
  
• About one in seven facilities — hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, home health agencies and hospices — to become unprofitable and possibly drop out of Medicare altogether.
  
  
• Many doctors to quit seeing Medicare patients entirely.
  
  
The alternative report says that the number of facilities that would become unprofitable will grow to 25 percent by 2030 and 40 percent by 2050 if the health reform law is implemented as written.

Source: John C. Goodman, "UNPRECEDENTED: Medicare Chief Actuary Disavows Trustees' Report, Publishes an Alternative Report," Right Side News, August 9, 2010.

For text:

http://www.rightsidenews.com/2010080911301/health-and-education/health-alertunprecedented-medicare-chief-actuary-disavows-trustees-report-publishes-an-alternative-report.html

For Medicare Trustees Report:

http://www.cms.gov/ReportsTrustFunds/downloads/tr2010.pdf

For Illustrative Alternative Report:

http://www.cms.gov/ReportsTrustFunds/downloads/2010TRAlternativeScenario.pdf

For more on Health Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=16

Goodman's cross-posted article at Right Side News, includes a telling graph which displays the trendline suggested by the actuaries.

Granted that even independent consultants of the United States government (once, accurately called the "federal" government) are infamous for underprojecting the true cost of government programs, this April news would have been front page, were it not for the Marxstream media's Marxstreaming.

Is there anyone in America left, who wonders why the Marxofascist insurrection in D.C. executes their Cloward-Piven work quickly, under the dark of night?




Video, "Pelosi: We have to Pass the Health Care Bill
so that You Can Find Out What is in it"


© Arlen Williams