Surprise!
It is hard to understate the fiscal importance of a recently released paper from the Office of the Actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).
And yet the document received only a shoulder shrug from the media and a complete blackout from Democrats. It’s easy to see why.
The back-story is that a group of trustees monitors the Medicare program and releases an annual report outlining the program’s current and projected fiscal condition. (The same is true for Social Security.)
However, the trustees’ projections must follow whatever the law says.
So, for example, if federal law says Medicare will only be allowed to grow by some designated annual growth rate, that’s what the trustees have to assume in their projections — regardless of whether they believe those spending limitations will actually occur.
Fortunately, Medicare’s Office of the Actuary doesn’t have to live in the political dream world.
For the third time since Democrats pushed through ObamaCare in 2010, the office has released a “memorandum” to highlight the challenges — to put it mildly — the government faces in adhering to the Medicare and Medicaid growth rates imposed by the president’s health care law.
More at IBD