HR3590 Health Care Bill & Government Health Insurance

A feature on CNN shares that the new health care reform law will be able to extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by 12 years. This information is based on the annual report released by the trustees that oversee Medicare, following an earlier report released by the Obama administration.

The new health care reform law is expected to lower health care costs, focuses on prevention, and improves service quality, effects that will lead to the curbing of what was termed as the exploding costs of Medicare. In addition, the fact that health care reform will require high-income earners to pay an extra 0.9 percentage point in payroll tax, as well as a new 3.8% Medicare tax on investment income, is expected to generate more revenue for Medicare.

Treasury Secretary and Medicare trustee Tim Geithner said: “This new law gives Americans more control over health care decisions, ends insurance company abuses and will bring down health care costs over the long term.”

While all this point to a bright future for the Medicare program with health care reform, there are critics that targeted the report and said that it serves as proof that Medicare costs continue to bring harm to the economy. They also seemed skeptical about how viable the projected savings due to health care reform is.

One of those who questioned the report is Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster, who wrote: “The financial projections shown in this report for Medicare do not represent a reasonable expectation for actual program operations.”