CRFB Release Urges Health Care Cost Controls

July 30 - Yesterday, CRFB put out a release urging policymakers to focus on controlling costs associated with current health care reform efforts. The release stresses the need to control entitlement growth -- which continues to inflate the national debt to unsustainable levels -- and also puts forth substantive policy suggestions for how to accomplish this goal.

CRFB recommends increasing consumer cost-consciousness, bundling Medicare payments, limiting inefficient treatments and procedures, empowering MedPAC or creating a new agency to cost-control mechanisms, and eliminating or limiting the tax exclusions for employer-provided health insurance.

According to Maya MacGuineas, President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, "Fully paying for any expansion of coverage does not on its own make a plan fiscally responsible - - it is only through aggressive measures to slow the growth of health care spending that a reform plan will be able to improve the long-term fiscal picture."