Comments for David Brooks Doesn't Have Access to the Medicare Trustees Report at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 6 out of 6 comments http://www.cepr.net Fri, 24 May 2013 01:09:31 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-doesnt-have-access-to-the-medicare-trustees-report#comment-18306 Of course, the federal government isn't revenue constrained. A growing economy with a growing population needs more money, the deficit adds that money. Spending at the federal level, on average, should be more than tax revenue. Sectoral balances, this should be obvious. - Joe Tue, 21 Aug 2012 13:51:23 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-doesnt-have-access-to-the-medicare-trustees-report#comment-18297 "Entitlement" is used as a pejorative, as well as a term in punditspeak. - JohnT Tue, 21 Aug 2012 06:39:01 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-doesnt-have-access-to-the-medicare-trustees-report#comment-18296 Dean, I appreciate the fact you know so many things I don't, and you provide an important sanity check to things I'm reading elsewhere. I come here immediately after every David Brooks column. I find your site essential. Still, I took a quick look at the Medicare report you linked above, and found the trustees aren't necessarily convinced the Affordable Care Act will result in the improvement to Medicare Solvency that you imply. From the report: [quote]The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, is another, and even larger, source of policy-related uncertainty. This legislation, referred to collectively as the “Affordable Care Act” or ACA, contains roughly 165 provisions affecting the Medicare program by reducing costs, increasing revenues, improving certain benefits, combating fraud and abuse, and initiating a major program of research and development to identify alternative provider payment mechanisms, health care delivery systems, and other changes intended to improve the quality of health care and reduce its costs to Medicare. The Board assumes that the various cost-reduction measures—the most important of which are the reductions in the payment rate updates for most categories of Medicare providers by the growth in economy-wide multifactor productivity—will occur as the Affordable Care Act requires. The Trustees believe that this outcome, while plausible, will depend on the achievement of unprecedented improvements in health care provider productivity. If the health sector could not transition to more efficient models of care delivery and achieve productivity increases commensurate with economy-wide productivity, and if the provider reimbursement rates paid by commercial insurers continued to follow the same negotiated process used to date, then the availability and quality of health care received by Medicare beneficiaries relative to that received by those with private health insurance would fall over time, generating pressure to modify Medicare’s payment rates. Given these uncertainties, future Medicare costs could be substantially larger than shown in the Trustees’ current-law projection.[/quote] - Mike Tue, 21 Aug 2012 05:52:41 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-doesnt-have-access-to-the-medicare-trustees-report#comment-18293 I wonder if Dean will get invited on News Hour to explain all this to Brooks. - coberly Tue, 21 Aug 2012 04:28:03 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-doesnt-have-access-to-the-medicare-trustees-report#comment-18288 [quote]It doesn't make sense to blame the mail order business.[/quote] Oh contraire. Congress is busily putting the US Post Office out of business for the benefit of UPS and Fed Ex. In no time at all that charge for a first class postage letter will start to look like the charge for an MRI scan from the hospital and the corner store will revert back to brick and mortar transactions only in short order. A la Brooks, that's the way capitalism works. Once free of the crippling government entitlement chains of taxes, consumers will once again be free to pay more to get more from the winners who take all. Giving up mail order as a loser for a winner like brick and mortar is just one more sign of how free markets are advanced under capitalism and vice versa. - Last Mover Tue, 21 Aug 2012 03:19:26 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/david-brooks-doesnt-have-access-to-the-medicare-trustees-report#comment-18287 Superb! I would say no more, except the comment form said that my comment was too short. - bmz Tue, 21 Aug 2012 02:36:18 +0100