Current proposals to reform the health care and health insurance systems would affect the federal budget and the nations spending for health care in many ways, and those effects can be summarized using a variety of different measures. Today CBO released a letter toclarify the measures being used by CBO in its analysis of such proposalsin particular, the effects of proposals on federal budget deficits and on the magnitude of the federal budgetary commitment to health care.
October 2009
CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) have just issued a preliminary analysis of H.R. 3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, as introduced on October 29, 2009. Among other things, H.R.
Investment in research and development (R&D) over the past several decades has produced a wealth of valuable new drug therapies. Current and future pharmaceutical R&D will determine what drug therapies will become available, and thus will influence future health-care costs. Yesterday CBO released a brief that describes the state of investment in drug R&D and the factors that influence it.
Today CBO released a letter responding to a request from the Ranking Members of the House and Senate Budget Committees for information on the effects of S. 1776, the Medicare Physicians Fairness Act of 2009. Under current law, CBO estimates that Medicares payment rates for physicians services will be reduced by about 21 percent in January 2010 and by about 6 percent annually for several subsequent years. S.
The public and private sectors in the United States together spend over $500 billion a year on infrastructure projects, including highways and airports, water and energy utilities, dams, waste disposal sites and other environmental facilities, schools, and hospitals. The federal government makes a significant contribution to that investment through its direct expenditures and the subsidies it provides indirectly through the tax system, which are sometimes referred to as tax expenditures.
In its October 7th analysis of the health care reform proposal that was ultimately approved by the Senate Finance Committee, CBO estimated that roughly 94 percent of the legal nonelderly population would have health insurance in 2019, compared with about 83 percent today. (That estimate did not reflect an analysis of the legislative language that has been drafted to implement that proposal, which was recently released.) The agency has received many questions about that estimate; let me try to answer the two most frequent questions here.
From time to time, you may hear in the news about a CBO cost estimate, log on to our Web site to check it out, and discover that its not there. That raises the question: When are CBOs cost estimates made public, and when are they not?
Answer: CBO does not provide confidential estimates for any proposals that have been made public. However, it honors requests for confidentiality if a proposal is not public, and maintains that confidentiality even if information about the estimate becomes public, as long as the proposal itself is not public.
Today I testified about the economic effects of legislation aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, drawing on a report that CBO released a few weeks ago.
Today, CBOs Acting Assistant Director of the National Security Division testified before the House Budget Committee about the long-term implications of the fiscal year 2010 budget submission for the Department of Defense (DoD). Decisions about national defense that are made todaywhether they involve weapon systems, military compensation, or numbers of personnelcan have long-lasting effects on the composition of the nations armed forces and the budgetary resources needed to support them.
CBO just distributed two tables of additional analysis of the Senate Finance Committee Chairmans Mark, as amended, of the Americas Healthy Future Act of 2009. The first table updates information (originally provided in a September 22nd letter to Chairman Baucus) about the subsidies offered through insurance exchanges and enrollees payments for that coverage.