{"id":254,"date":"2012-04-14T18:59:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-14T22:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=254"},"modified":"2012-04-14T18:59:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-14T22:59:00","slug":"off-the-charts-blog-center-on-budget-and-policy-priorities-double-counting-canard-quacks-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=254","title":{"rendered":"Off the Charts Blog | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities | \u201cDouble-Counting\u201d Canard Quacks Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Off the Charts Blog | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities | \u201cDouble-Counting\u201d Canard Quacks Again<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Former Bush Administration official Charles Blahous has garnered some media attention by gussying up old, discredited arguments about the budgetary effects of health reform. But his paper adds nothing new to the debate.<\/p>\n

Blahous claims the Congressional Budget Office\u2019s cost estimate for the health reform law \u201cdouble-counts\u201d a considerable portion of the law\u2019s Medicare savings. By subtracting these savings, Blahous asserts that \u2014 contrary to CBO \u2014 health reform increases the deficit.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s no double-counting involved in recognizing that Medicare savings improve the status of both the federal budget and the Medicare trust funds. The outlooks for the budget and for the Medicare trust funds are two different things; some changes in law may affect one and not the other, but other changes affect both.<\/p>\n

CBO estimates that health reform will modestly reduce the federal budget deficit. The Medicare actuary says that health reform will extend the solvency of the Hospital Insurance trust fund by eight years.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s no different than when a baseball player hits a home run: it adds to his team\u2019s score and also improves his batting average. Neither situation involves double-counting.<\/p>\n

CBO has accounted for deficit reduction in exactly the same way in previous Congresses, under both political parties. Until opponents of health reform latched onto the notion, no one accused CBO of faulty accounting.<\/p>\n

For example, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 and the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 \u2014 both of which Republican Congresses approved \u2014 included Medicare savings that were counted as reducing the deficit and improving Medicare\u2019s financial outlook. The Senate Republican Policy Committee rightly claimed credit for this result, and no one made charges of double-counting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

– Sent using Google Toolbar<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Off the Charts Blog | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities | \u201cDouble-Counting\u201d Canard Quacks Again: Former Bush Administration official Charles Blahous has garnered some media attention by gussying up … Continue reading “Off the Charts Blog | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities | \u201cDouble-Counting\u201d Canard Quacks Again”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[39,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defending-ppaca","category-ppaca"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}