The landmark legislation probably won’t hold costs down, and it won’t let everybody keep their current health insurance if they like it, Chief Actuary Richard Foster told the House Budget Committee. His office is responsible for independent long-range cost estimates.
Foster not only works for the Obama administration but is also in fact the administration’s principal authority on Medicare and Medicaid spending. Elsewhere, he has estimated that, under Obamacare, the cost of Medicaid would more than double by the end of this decade, from $405 billion in 2010 to $840 billion in 2019 — as Obamacare would add what Foster estimates to be “about 20 million” people to the Medicaid rolls. Moreover, he has warned that, under Obamacare, Medicare’s reimbursement rates to health care providers would fall below even the notoriously low Medicaid reimbursement rates, thereby seriously jeopardizing Medicare enrollees’ access to care.
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