New Obama Administration Health Care Guru: Double Counting? What Double Counting?

Reason.com ^ | 11/19/10 | Peter Suderman

[Nachum]

Is Donald Berwick, the controversial new head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, standing by the Obama administration’s double counting of savings in the new health care law? At a Senate hearing this morning, he declined to engage with official criticism of the administration's claim that the the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act extends the Medicare Trust Fund.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius has been pushing the line that the PPACA extends Medicare’s solvency for a while, despite pushback from both the Congressional Budget Office and Medicare's chief actuary, Richard Foster. And now Berwick seems to be at least tacitly on board. I didn’t get the exact quote (I’ll update when I see a transcript), but when Republican Sen. Orin Hatch questioned Berwick about the conflict between what the administration has said and what Foster has said, Berwick’s response was to suggest that the administration was simply using standard accounting methods.

[Nachum]

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[grumpygresh]

Paul Ryan would be the man to interrogate Berwick et al on this very subject. He brought this up to zer0 at that faux summit and was given the brush off. In 2011, these rats better not be given a pass when they go up to the Hill for questioning.
I want to see some intellectual waterboarding of these rats at congressional hearings next year.