Monday, November 21st, 2011 - 23:58
Monday, November 21, 2011 - 22:20
The Supercommittee's inability to fashion a budget compromise to pare down the federal deficit will leave health programs exposed to automatic budget cuts.
Starting in 2013 Medicare, biomedical research, and public health programs will be at risk of substantial funding cuts due to the country's fiscal crisis. The two biggest expenses on the government tab, Medicaid and Medicare, will be spared, for the most part though. Medicaid, a matching federal-state funding program would not be affected by the automatic trigger, while Medicare would experience a 2% overall reduction, seen in payments to hospitals and providers.
Estimates of cuts to health care funding are inexact. The Congressional Budget Office projects reductions of non-defense discretionary programs in 2013 of 7.8 percent, dropping each year to 5.5 percent in 2021. This would translate into substantial deterioration of the following domains:
-Public health
-Medical research
-HIV/AIDS
-Disease prevention
The question looking forward is whether foregoing prevention in exchange for billion dollar reductions is wise in a trillion health care system. Read more about this story
