The House Ways and Means Committee will mark up a bill today to delay the excise tax on high-cost health plans (the so-called “Cadillac tax”) by another year, to 2023. That would be unwise for two reasons: it would lose needed revenue, and it would set back efforts to slow the growth of health care costs.
The...
The Social Security and Medicare trustees will release their annual reports on the programs’ finances tomorrow and, though we don’t know how the projections may change from last year’s, we expect them to tell a similar story: ...
New Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections show that the budget outlook has deteriorated significantly, but that doesn’t justify unwise spending cuts or an economically damaging balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
CBO now projects that the deficit will top $1 trillion...
The problems with a constitutional balanced budget amendment, which the House will vote on this week, go far beyond the significant economic harm it could cause. For instance, its requirement that policymakers offset federal spending in any year with revenues collected in...
Some congressional Republicans want to force votes to cut (or “rescind”) billions of dollars in non-defense spending from the 2018 government funding bill Congress passed on a bipartisan basis last month, according to press reports. Doing so would renege on the recent bipartisan budget...
Congress’ continued failure to meet budget deadlines has prompted widespread calls to improve the budget process, and the recent Bipartisan Budget Act established a joint select committee to examine the budget and appropriations process and recommend reforms. Meanwhile, under the auspices of the...
The four-week federal funding bill that the House will consider tomorrow would temporarily suspend or delay three health-related taxes: the 2.3 percent excise tax on medical devices, the fee on health insurance providers (also known as the health insurance tax), and the excise tax on high-cost health...
Health insurers continue to lobby for repealing or suspending the fee on health insurance providers — also known as the health insurance tax, enacted to help pay for health reform — before the end of the year. Policymakers suspended the tax for 2017, but the industry is pushing to...
The House will vote tomorrow on a bill to extend funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), temporarily increase federal funding for Puerto Rico’s Medicaid program, extend funding for community health centers and several other public health programs for two years, and temporarily avert cuts to Medicaid disproportionate...
The House Energy and Commerce Committee will mark up legislation tomorrow to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) — a presidentially appointed commission charged with developing ways to slow the growth of Medicare spending.
Despite the claims of its critics, repealing IPAB would be unwise, as we’...
