Dan Froomkin (emphasis mine):
The new health care law has significantly improved the prognosis for Medicare, extending the life of its trust fund by 12 years until 2029, and thereby delaying any need for dramatic changes in benefits or revenues, according to a new report.
The annual check-up from government actuaries overseeing the nation’s two central safety-net programs also found that Social Security continues to be much less of a problem than Medicare, and will remain in strong financial shape at least through 2037.
“The financial outlook for the Medicare program is substantially improved as a result of the far-reaching changes in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” concludes the Medicare report — although the trustees warned that the improvements depend on the successful implementation of the law.
Paul Krugman contrasts, in graphic form, the outlook for Medicare solvency pre- and post-health care reform, assuming, again, that the law’s cost-saving provisions are implemented successfully (emphasis is mine):
… Yes, it’s just a projection, and debatable like all projections. And it’s still not enough. But anyone who both claims to be worried about the long-run deficit and was opposed to health reform has some explaining to do. All the facts we have suggest that health reform was the biggest move toward fiscal responsibility in a long, long time.
Brad DeLong goes further:
Not the biggest move toward long-run fiscal responsibility in a long time. Not the biggest move toward long-run fiscal responsibility in a long, long time.
It is the biggest move toward long-run fiscal responsibility ever.
The folks who opposed health care reform all along, think they have found a huge gotcha in the fact that these are only projections:
… This rosey report is based on the idea that health care costs will rise slower than in the past – despite the fact this has never happened, budget cuts no one intends to make, and the perfect implementation of the extraordinarily flawed and imprudent Obamacare.
That’s Rick Moran at Right Wing Nut House. Rick, of course, is also a contributing writer here at TMV, and my respect for Rick’s intelligence, thoughtfulness, and writing talent comes with no caveats. I simply disagree with him on this one (as on a lot of other issues, but that has nothing to do with intellectual honesty or writing ability). Rick’s insistence that this new report is wrong because the health care reform law (what Rick calls “Obamacare”) will not be implemented as written contains within it the implicit assumption that the law as written does justify the report’s projected conclusions. Yes, if the law’s provisions are carried out the way the law provides for them to be carried out, then those provisions will have the salutary results for Medicare that the report says they will, Rick seems to be saying. He just doesn’t believe the law’s provisions will be carried out as the law provides. But this is perverse given that Rick and other opponents of the health care reform law opposed the law before it was passed, and still oppose it now. Krugman is absolutely correct: You cannot simultaneously claim that health care reform as written and passed is a budget-buster, and agree that if health care reform is implemented as written and passed, it will improve Medicare’s health prospects. If the second half of that sentence is true, then logically you should be supporting the law as written and passed, and pushing for it to be implemented as it’s supposed to be implemented.
Tom Maguire at Just One Minute is another conservative blogger I respect for the fact that he eschews inflammatory rhetoric and is a good writer, but his “Krugman will believe anything that makes health care reform look good” makes me laugh because it could just as accurately say, “Maguire will disbelieve anything that makes health care reform look good.” In fact, you could use this same construction for almost any issue about which there is strong ideological disagreement: “Kathy will believe anything that makes the Iraq war look bad.” Or, “Maguire will believe anything that makes the Iraq war look good.” It’s a fun parlor game, but as argumentation it doesn’t work well.
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