CBO Projects Long-Term Growth in Federal Healthcare Spending
A new long-term budget outlook from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that, if current laws do not change, federal spending on major mandatory healthcare programs will grow from roughly 5 percent of GDP today to about 10 percent in 2035, with continuing increases thereafter. The projections include the impact of recently enacted healthcare reform legislation, which the CBO expects will increase federal spending for most of the next two decades.
Although the CBO estimates that reform legislation will slightly reduce federal healthcare spending by 2030, the CBO has not changed its estimate of long-term healthcare cost growth rates, given the significant uncertainties involved in projecting spending that far in the future.
To put U.S. fiscal policy on a sustainable path, the CBO says that lawmakers would have to substantially reduce the growth in outlays for federal healthcare programs or match the growth with equivalent declines in other other federal spending, corresponding increases in federal revenues, or a combination of the two.
Posted on 6/30/2010 11:30:25 AM
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