The debate on health care is heating up. Views on Obama’s proposed health care overhaul vary. Some are excited and hopeful of the outlook of security and stability through coverage for the millions of uninsured Americans while others worry about increased influence of the government and increased costs that ultimately will be born by them.

In the midst of this plan David Walker recently came up on television and talked about the findings of a study released a study on Wednesday by the Peterson Foundation on the long-term costs of the reform. David Walker was the U.S. Comptroller General and the Head of the GAO from 1998 to 2008 and prior to that he was appointed comptroller general by president Clinton in 1998.  The findings show a mixed picture:

Here some of the positive findings:

• Through the proposed health insurance exchanges and the public plan, the number of uninsured goes down from about 50mio to about 20mio. Currently more than 30Mio Americans can’t get health coverage.
• The Act almost comes close to paying for itself, it is “only” $39bn short for next 10yrs.

The rather bad news:

• It adds 1 trillion to deficit in second 10yrs, total health care costs go up rather than down (cost curve bent up rather than down)

The Obama Administration says that half trillion savings will come from savings in medicare and medicaid as determined by a commission, but Walker has doubts about the commission being able to follow through on it based the history of congress.

Some more findings are:

• without the reform act, the number of uninsured by 2011 would be 49.2M
• under the reform act, the public plan will enroll 20.7M People
• number of people with private insurance would fall by book under reform
• total cost of benefits provided under the act would be 1.12 Trillion
• the reform will increase the federal deficit by 1.05Trillion from 2010 to 2029

For the full Press Release click here

http://www.pgpf.org/resources/PGPF-Health-Care-Study-Release.pdf

For the full Report

http://www.pgpf.org/resources/PGPF-Health-Care-Report.pdf