The Obama administration can’t leave well enough alone. It has renewed its fight with the Medicare program's chief actuary after he reiterated a challenge of White House estimates for savings in the new healthcare law, The Hill reports.
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Medicare's Rick Foster
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Rick Foster said in testimony to the House Budget Committee Wednesday that Obamacare will boost national healthcare spending by $311 billion through 2019 and questioned whether Medicare savings called for in the law are sustainable.
He told The Hill earlier this month that adjustments to Medicare rates required by the law would force hospitals to permanently become as productive as the whole economy, which he doesn’t think is possible.
"The actuary has also raised concerns that implementing these cost-control measures may not be possible," White House spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter writes on the White House blog. “Once again, we disagree.
"History shows that it is possible to implement measures that will save money for Medicare and the federal government. For example, both the Office of the Actuary and the Congressional Budget Office substantially underestimated the savings that were achieved by the Balanced Budget Act."
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