In his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, the President joked about the fact that House Republicans have repealed the Healthcare law, and affirmed his commitment to his administration’s signature piece of legislation.

Just one day later, however, the fate of the same Healthcare law appears more doubtful, perhaps, than the President and the Democrats imagined.

According to Foxnews.com, Medicare’s Chief Actuary Richard Foster told House Budget Committee members on Wednesday that the two central premises of the Healthcare law, upon which the President and Democrats have been defending the law, are not likely to come to fruition.

Foster responded to two “True-False” questions, posed by Rep. Tom McClintock (R-California): 1) whether the law will keep down healthcare costs; and 2) whether the law will allow people to keep their health insurance if they choose.

Foster responded, “I would say false, more so than true,” to the question about costs, and “Not true, in all cases,” to the question about keeping coverage.

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Richard Foster, Chief Actuary for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, released this week to several Congressional offices a financial analysis of HR 3200, the House version of ObamaCare. He reached some inconvenient conclusions for President Obama and Congressional Leadership:

-“Total national health expenditures under this bill would increase by an estimated 2.7 percent in 2019…”

 -“The additional demand for health services could be difficult to meet initially with existing health provider resources and could lead to price increases, cost-shifting, and/or changes in providers’ willingness to treat patients with low-reimbursement health coverage.”

-More than half of the expansion in coverage (18 million out of 34 million) would be from increased Medicaid coverage.

-12 million people would lose employer-sponsored coverage.

-The productivity adjustments to Medicare are “unrealistic” and providers “might end their participation” because the cuts would make serving Medicare beneficiaries unprofitable.

-Medicare Advantage enrollment would decrease by 64 percent (from a projected level of 13.2 million to 4.7 million under the proposal).

As of today, HHS still hadn’t published the analysis on their website, even though it was written by its own staff. We have a feeling it may never find a home there. So, we’ve brought it to you directly. Full financial analysis below.  

CMS OACT – Memo on Financial Impact of H R 3200 09-10-21 –