"Obama: Health care is driving down the deficit"

[applegrove]

Obama: Health care is driving down the deficit

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/oct/08/barack-obama/obama-health-care-driving-down-deficit/

"SNIP.........................


"Partly because health care prices have been growing at the slowest rate in nearly 50 years, the growth in what health care costs the government is down," Obama said in a speech about the economy last week at Northwestern University. "Health care has long been the single-biggest driver of America’s future deficits. It’s been the single-biggest driver of our debt. Health care is now the single-biggest factor driving down those deficits."

We wondered: Is it true that "health care is now the single-biggest factor driving down" the federal budget deficit? We found that the claim is pretty well supported.

To put it simply: A few years ago, economists predicted that net federal spending on health care would get very high, very fast -- fast enough to drive the deficit out of control. Now, by contrast, they predict that net federal spending on health care will grow, but not quite as fast as originally thought, making the deficit at least a little more manageable.

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The CBO said this shrunken projection of the deficit largely had to do with lower estimates of the cost of Affordable Care Act insurance subsidies and Medicare. Between February and April, CBO lowered estimated spending over the 10-year period for Affordable Care Act-related expenses by 15 percent and lowered estimated spending on Medicare by 1.4 percent.

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Rosnick pointed us to the CBO’s 75-year projection published in 2007, which was both before the recession and before the Affordable Care Act. That year, the CBO projected that the primary deficit (that is, the deficit not counting interest payments) in 2082 would be about 7.1 percent of GDP. By contrast, the 75-year budget outlook published in 2014 projects that the 2082 deficit will be around 2.4 percent -- significantly lower than previous projections.


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[Cha]

1. A Twofer! Mahalo, applegrove.. and Thanks Obama!

[bigwillq]

2. Well, that's good.

K and R