The Institute of Medicine is about to dump all over the CBO health care estimates

[DrToast]

This is something to keep an eye and should be a big deal in the coming weeks.

Is an IOM v. CBO Smackdown Looming on Health-Reform Costs?

The U.S. can cut health-care spending by $250 billion a year within a decade, a congressionally chartered panel will say this month in a bid to show costs can be contained even if all Americans are insured.

A report from the Institute of Medicine, which advises the federal government on health care, will counter “stingy” estimates from the Congressional Budget Office, said Arnold Milstein, planning chairman of the institute’s working group on health costs. The panel’s annual figure is five times the amount the budget office says the U.S. will save under a bill in the House of Representatives, according to the budget office’s July 17 letter to House Ways and Means Committee chairman Charles Rangel.

The preliminary findings from the institute, part of the National Academies in Washington, will be issued amid a growing debate over the health-care overhaul proposals that President Barack Obama is urging Congress to pass. The report will help bolster the argument that covering the nation’s 46 million uninsured won’t bust the budget, advocates of the bill say.

“The institute will make it very clear that we are right,” said Senator Benjamin Cardin, a Maryland Democrat who backs health legislation because he says it will save money. “It gives us the lift we need and the encouragement to say, ‘We’re right to do this.’”

...

Advocates of Obama’s health-care proposals have argued the budget office’s track record is poor in predicting health costs. The office overestimated the cost of Medicare prescription-drug coverage by 35 percent when it was proposed in 2003, and missed more than half of the effects of reimbursement cuts passed as part of the Balanced Budget Act in 1997, Clinton administration Medicare director Bruce Vladeck said in an interview.

“The Congressional Budget Office is always wrong,” Vladeck said. “The CBO systematically underestimates savings, so we cut twice as much in 1997 as we needed to balance the budget.”
(more)

http://www.thehealthcareblog.com/the_health_care_blog/2009/09/us-healthcosts-panel-to-rebut-stingy-budget-office-savings-.html

I wasn't familiar with the IOM, but they're very influential apparently.

[uponit7771]

1. Wait, if the CBO's track record is this fucked up why are we listening to them?!!?

TIA

[Festivito]

4. CBO must be discredited before it determines cost of single-payer.

Otherwise we the people would be agast at the lesser cost of covering everyone for everything, just eliminating insurance companies.

[slipslidingaway]

2. knr - should be interesting, thanks for posting n/t

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, DrToast.