National health care spending up $222 billion over the next ten years under the Senate health care reform bill, so estimates the Chief Actuary of CMS.
Not that this is unexpected, but it is also not something the politicians are prone to talk about as they prefer to think only in terms of the federal budget and not the rest of America. The reason for the increased spending is simple, more people covered, more demand for health care services and (I will add) an increased lack of concern for health care costs on the part of individuals.
The reason the numbers work for federal budget purposes is because they are using ten years of increased revenue and six years of expenses in the first ten years plus there is a tremendous amount of cost shifting to the states and to individuals.
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