Medicare a Bad Precedent for Government Health Plans? August 24, 2009

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Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/06/17/Health_Care_Reform_Long-Term_Fiscal_Impact

Former Bush Administration official James Capretta lists some obstacles to successful government health care reform. He gives Medicare as an example of why costs have been driven so high.

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What are the fiscal risks of health care reform? What can be done to minimize the strain on the federal budget from increasing health care costs? New subsidies for health insurance can only exacerbate the budgetary shortfalls. Hudson Visiting Fellow Hanns Kuttner has prepared a new paper that assesses the long-term fiscal risk from health care reform and the tools available for managing that risk.

Joining Kuttner to discuss his paper -- and other questions on health care reform -- were James C. Capretta, Fellow in the Economics and Ethics Program of the Ethics and Public Policy Center; Alice M. Rivlin, Senior Fellow, Metropolitan Studies, Economic Studies and Greater Washington Research at the Brookings Institution; C. Eugene Steuerle, Vice President of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation; and Paul Van de Water, Senior Fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. - Hudson Institute

James C. Capretta is a Fellow in the Economics and Ethics Program of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is also a contributing editor to EPPC's journal The New Atlantis, and the author of the health care policy blog Diagnosis.

From January 2001 to May 2004, Mr. Capretta served as the Bush Administration's top budget official for health care, Social Security and pensions, education, and labor policy. He was the lead official in the Office of Management and Budget for all aspects of Medicare and Medicaid reform policy development and implementation as well as for the development of the President's other important domestic policy initiatives in education and labor.