Angie: January 2010 Archives

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) cites federal healthcare spending as "the single greatest threat" to the United States' budget stability in its new report, The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2010 to 2020. Under current law, Medicare spending will reach $1,038 billion in 2020, with Medicaid spending coming in at $458 billion.  In 2009, higher unemployment drove up Medicaid spending by 9 percent ($18 billion). For the previous 10 years, the program's average annual growth rate had held at 7 percent. Medicare outlays also rose faster than average, jumping by 10 percent ($39 billion).

For an article summarizing the report, click here and for the CBO report, click here.

The election of Republican candidate Scott Brown to fill Ted Kennedy's senate seat last week was viewed by some as a referendum on health care reform.  The Kaiser Family Foundation did some polling on this election and found that the driving forces behind Brown's election to be much more nuanced: 

First, while health care policy did top the list of voting issues, the economy and general discontent with Washington also were significant factors for Brown voters. Second, and perhaps more importantly, Brown voters' top complaint about health reform was not about the substance of the legislation itself or its perceived impact on them or their families, but about a policymaking process that they seemed to think had gone badly wrong ... For Brown voters health reform became a reflection of, and in some ways a proxy for, deeper concerns about how Washington works today. 

For the full story, click here.

President Obama devoted relatively little time to health care reform in Wednesday night's state of the union address.    The topic of health care did not appear until thirty minutes into the address, a sign, according to The New York Times, "of how imperiled [the health care bill] had become:"

Mr. Obama's speech did nothing to resolve differences between the House and the Senate or to clarify the way forward. Just 20 weeks ago Mr. Obama stood in the same place and made an urgent plea to a joint session of Congress. "The time for bickering is over, the time for games has passed," he said on Sept. 9.  "Now is the time to deliver on health care," he said then.

But on Wednesday health care was wedged into a catalog of presidential priorities, which included jobs, the economy, education, bank regulation, energy independence, deficit reduction and the war in Afghanistan.  The change highlighted the risks for Mr. Obama in staking more of his political capital on legislation whose fate in Congress is uncertain -- a bill that divides the Democratic caucus, that is reviled by Republicans and that makes many independent voters nervous.

President Obama went on to state in his address that he had not clearly explained the benefits of health care reform to the public and blamed special interests, industry lobbyists and partisan politics for sidetracking healthcare reform.  He stood by the health care reform bills that and urged both parties to take another look at the bill after "temperatures cool"

For the full story in the New York Times, click  here .