| | | >> Postscript: Just as an aside, the Medicare trustees’ report he encouraged voters to read shows Medicare’s fiscal health getting considerably better, not worse, in large part because of the Affordable Care Act.
No. Not what they said:
"The Board assumes that the various cost-reduction measures the most important of which
are the reductions in the annual payment rate updates for most categories of Medicare providers by the growth in economy-wide private nonfarm business multifactor productivity
will occur as the ACA requires. The Trustees believe that this outcome is achievable if
health care providers are able to realize productivity improvements at a faster rate than experienced historically.
However, if the health sector cannot transition to more efficient models of care delivery and
achieve productivity increases commensurate with economy-wide productivity, and if the provider reimbursement rates paid by commercial insurers continue to follow the same negotiated process used to date, then the availability and quality of health care received by Medicare beneficiaries would, under current law, fall over time relative to that received by those with private health insurance."
As you can readily see, the trustees said NOTHING like what was said, and in fact, they said ONLY if assumptions which would appear to be unlikely to be fulfilled were, in fact, fulfilled, might this happen. |
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