Do you recall that part of the path to the passage of Obamacare involved some manipulation in order to get the proper CBO scoring? There were a lot of aspects to that, including the delay of many of the bill’s provisions until 2014. One way in which costs were kept low enough was the future reduction of federal payments to insurance companies in the Medicare Advantage program.
Well, as with so many of the unpopular but seemingly necessary parts of Obamacare, those cuts have been suspended—at least till after the 2014 election. How very convenient:
Under cuts planned by the administration, insurers offering the plans were to see their federal payments reduced by 1.9 percent, which likely would have necessitated cuts for customers.
Instead, the administration said the federal payments to insurers will increase next year by .40 percent.
The healthcare law included $200 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage over 10 years, in part to pay for ObamaCare.
The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) on Monday said changes in the healthcare market meant it did not need to make those cuts to Medicare Advantage this year.
It cited an increase in healthy beneficiaries under Medicare, which it said has lowered projected costs for that program…
The announcement comes after insurers spent millions on a public relations blitz seeking to head off the cuts, and after dozens of Democrats joined Republicans in calling on the administration to keep MA rates flat to avoid cutting benefits for seniors.
So, let’s see: the cuts were necessary to pass Obamacare. But they are poison at the ballot box, so there’s been pressure (from both sides, and insurance companies too) to call them off. Suddenly, as an explanation for their suspension, we find that old people have gotten healthier. Forgive me for being skeptical.
Republicans face a dilemma on this and myriad other issues connected with Obamacare. If they let all the terrible consequences of the original bill play out, it gives the Democrats ammunition for saying that Republicans want people to suffer. On the other hand, if Republicans block certain aspects of the bill that would make people feel pain (such as reductions in Medicare Advantage reimbursement), they increase their “compassionate” creds but they also improve the acceptability of Obamacare to the public, which is likely to end up blunting their own cause. Meanwhile, for most people, forgotten (if it was ever even known in the first place) is the hypocrisy and deception of the Democrats in perpetrating the original CBO scoring game, replaced by relief that Medicare Advantage will remain more or less the same for now.
So, what have we learned? We’re given a blueprint for how to manipulate future bills under consideration by Congress in order to get a good score from the CBO. Just put all sorts of cost-saving devices in there in order to pass muster, and then just cancel them afterward by executive order or other non-legislative approaches. As for the cost of Obamacare, we’ll worry about that later, after November 2014.
You can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.
