Hint: phonied-up cost estimates and pay-offs to unions. Who could have ever imagined ?
Provisions of the health-care law that expand benefits for home-bound elderly, certain early retirees and coal miners will likely cost more than expected, say analysts and even some of the measures’ proponents.
The programs would expand home health services for the elderly and disabled and aid health plans covering retirees too young for Medicare.
The program for home-bound elderly, called Community Living Assistance Services and Supports, or Class, would help keep older people in their homes longer and reduce federal nursing-home expenses.
The provision was supported by several labor unions, which would have a chance to expand their memberships by organizing an expanded corps of home health workers.
The Congressional Budget Office warned last year that the Class program’s own benefits eventually would grow so large that it would drain the government’s finances. “The Class program would inevitably add to future deficits…by more than it reduces deficits in the near term”.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D., N.J.), chairman of the House health subcommittee and a main sponsor of the measure, said those concerns were overblown. “It’s pretty clear the way it’s been set up that it’s self-sustaining,” he said. The legislation requires the government to charge higher premiums if needed, he said.
The second program, to subsidize health-care plans that cover lots of retirees under age 65, will benefit cities and states as well as old-line manufacturing firms. The United Automobile Workers has made the federal reinsurance subsidy a top priority in recent years. Detroit’s unionized auto makers and parts makers have pushed thousands of UAW workers into early retirement as they retrenched in the past decade.
Excerpted from WSJ: Weighing the Cost of New Health Programs, MARCH 29, 2010 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703312504575142143632354272.html?mod=WSJ_hps_MIDDLEThirdNews
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