Feds, State Disagree on Cost of Health Reform
The debate over how much federal health care reform will cost Texas put the state’s health and human services chief on the defensive on Wednesday, as he presented a budget estimate to lawmakers that is 20 times higher than federal projections and questioned the mathematics education of an influential U.S. House chairman.
HHSC Commissioner Tom Suehs estimates that health care reform’s top-dollar items — Medicaid expansion to roughly 2.1 million Texans, plus heightened reimbursement rates for primary care physicians — will cost the state more than $27 billion between 2014 and 2024, up $3 billion from his most ...
Comments (3)
BurningFeet
Great! Texans have shown they can't do history and now we're showing we can't do math. Is this the real definition of 'red state'?
Scott Kilpatrick
Wait, wait, wait. The HHSC Commissioner whom Perry appointed in Sept. 2009, right when the national health care debate was really getting going, is now saying that it will cost us billions of dollars more than expected? Shock!
(That appointment is worth mentioning, IMO.)
Gritsforbreakfast
As a general rule of thumb, all economic projections beyond five years out are pure acts of fiction writing.