Editor's note. This first appeared http://powellcenterformedicalethics.blogspot.com. You should visit this blog daily.
An article appearing in Sunday's Washington Post details a new report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) which warns that Medicare cuts approved by House Health Restructuring bill are not only insufficient to provide needed funding for reform, but also may affect access to health care providers. "Report: Bill would reduce senior care" is available at www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/14/AR2009111402597_pf.htm. The CMS report on which it is based is available at http://thehill.com/images/stories/news/2009/november/weekend111309/cmsactuarynumbers.pdf

The article, written by Lori Montgomery, explains, "A plan to slash more than $500 billion from future Medicare spending -- one of the biggest sources of funding for President Obama's proposed overhaul of the nation's health-care system -- would sharply reduce benefits for some senior citizens and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others, according to a government evaluation released Saturday."

Requested by House Republicans, the report found that Medicare cuts contained in the health package approved by the House on November 7 are likely to prove so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether. Congress could intervene to avoid such an outcome, but "so doing would likely result in significantly smaller actual savings" than is currently projected, according to the analysis by the chief actuary for the agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid, the Post reports.

"That would wipe out a big chunk of the financing for the health-care reform package, which is projected to cost $1.05 trillion over the next decade," according to the Post.

"The report offers the clearest and most authoritative assessment to date of the effect that Democratic health reform proposals would have on Medicare and Medicaid, the nation's largest public health programs," Montgomery writes. "It analyzes the House bill, but the Senate is also expected to rely on hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts to finance the package that Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) hopes to take to the floor this week."

The National Right to Life Committee has long warned that over-promising and under-funding is a recipe for future rationing. That is, if a bill passes providing subsidies for the uninsured without providing an adequate funding source for it, not only now but as health care spending rises in the future, the likely result will be cutting back on the treatments and tests available not only for the newly subsidized but also for those covered by other government health care programs, notably Medicare for senior citizens. (See http://powellcenterformedicalethics.blogspot.com/2009/09/robbing-peter-to-pay-paul-funding.html).

Part One
Part Two