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White House Fact Sheet: Paying for Health Care Reform

Paying for Health Care Reform – $313 Billion in Additional Savings to Create a Deficit Neutral Plan – Summary Released by the White House Following the President’s Weekly Radio Address

  • “We have the most expensive health care system in the world, but do not get the best results. The rising costs of health care are a burden on our families and a drain on our long-term economic growth. If we continue on the course we are on, health care expenditures will reach 20 percent of GDP within a decade. Rapidly rising health care costs are leading our nation down a fiscally unsustainable path…the President wants to pass health care reform that allows one to keep their health insurance and choose their health care providers, expands coverage to the millions without, and brings down the cost of coverage. The President is committed to undertaking reform that is completely paid for and deficit neutral over the next decade. That is why he put forward in his FY 2010 Budget an historic $635 billion down payment on reform. Roughly half of this amount comes from revenue proposals, including limiting the value of itemized deductions for families making over a quarter-million dollars a year to the rates they were during the Reagan years, and about half comes from savings from Medicare and Medicaid.”
    • New Yorker: The Cost Conundrum – What a Texas town can teach us about health care, by Atul Gawande: “The explosive trend in American medical costs seems to have occurred [“in McAllen, Texas – it is one of the most expensive health-care markets in the country”] in an especially intense form. Our country’s health care is by far the most expensive in the world. In Washington, the aim of health-care reform is not just to extend medical coverage to everybody but also to bring costs under control. Spending on doctors, hospitals, drugs, and the like now consumes more than one of every six dollars we earn. The financial burden has damaged the global competitiveness of American businesses and bankrupted millions of families, even those with insurance. It’s also devouring our government.”
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