Pete Stark Admits Health Care Law Will INCREASE the Deficit
Pete Stark’s office yesterday used a memo from Medicare actuary Rick Foster to allege that repealing the health care law will accelerate the insolvency date of the Medicare Part A Trust Fund. There’s only one problem with Chairman Stark’s allegation: Medicare actuary Foster has also written that the Medicare provisions in the law “cannot be simultaneously used to finance other Federal outlays (such as the coverage expansions under the PPACA) and to extend the [Medicare] trust fund, despite the appearance of this result from the respective accounting conventions.”
If Rep. Stark wants to use the Medicare savings provisions to extend the life of the Medicare trust fund – and not to fund the new entitlements created by the law – the Congressional Budget Office previously estimated what the fiscal impact would be: “A net increase in federal deficits of $260 billion” through 2019.
With numbers like that as a result of the law’s double-counting, it’s perhaps appropriate that the House’s repeal vote comes in the middle of Chinese President Hu’s state visit – because if the law is not repealed, future American Presidents will have to borrow yet more money from China to cover the costs of Democrats’ health care gimmickry.