WASHINGTON — The growth of federal spending on health care will continue to decline as a proportion of the overall economy in the coming decades, in part because of cost controls mandated by President Obama’s health care law, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday.
The budget office said in its annual 25-year forecast that federal spending on major health care programs would amount to 8 percent of gross domestic product by 2039, one-tenth of a percentage point lower than its previous projection.
With the latest revision, the budget office has now reduced its 10-year estimate for spending by Medicare, Medicaid and other health programs by $1.23 trillion starting in 2010, the year the health care law took effect. By 2039, the savings would amount to $250 billion a year today, or about 1.5 percent of the economy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/16/b...-of-federal-spending-on-health-care.html?_r=0
This is the biggest news that no one is talking about. I guess scary stories are better for pageviews and eyeballs.
This is a massive shift. In fact, its exactly what Obama discussed when he talked about 'bending the cost curve' of Medicare. Exactly.
Heres a nice graph showing the budget impact.
Thats
total federal government spending... a massively lower projection.
