Sunday, August 08, 2010

Reading the Medicare Trustees' Report---ALL of It

The Krugman-ite folks did not get the whole picture.

...the financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations in either the short range (as a result of the unsustainable reductions in physician payment rates) or the long range (because of the strong likelihood that the statutory reductions in price updates for most categories of Medicare provider services will not be viable). I encourage readers to review the “illustrative alternative” projections that are based on more sustainable assumptions for physician and other Medicare price updates.

That was authored by the Chief Actuary of Medicare...

By the way, the 'financial projections' with which the Actuary takes exception were written by Geithner, Sibelius, Solis, Berwick, and Astrue--all Obama appointees. Just a co-incidence, of course.

HT: JustOneMinute

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