HHS Actuary Finds Senate Bill More Expensive Than "Unsustainable" Status Quo
  • The chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, has estimated that if the Senate health care bill became law, it would make the United States health care system more expensive than if we simply did nothing -- undermining the primary rationale for Obama's health care push.

    In a report released last night, which reaches similar conclusions to its analysis of the House bill, CMS found that if the Senate health care bill passed, America would spend $234 billion more on health care over the next 10 years than if we did nothing.

    As Obama put it in his June speech to the American Medical Association, "If we fail to act, one out of every five dollars we earn will be spent on health care within a decade." Yet if we adopt the Senate bill, spending will actually rise to 20.9 percent of GDP, according to CMS, compared to 20.8 percent if we simply do nothing.