The Health Care Reserve Fund: A Historic Commitment to Reform

From The President via Whitehouse.gov

As I have said more than a few times before (even on this blog) reducing health care costs is the key to the country’s fiscal future and also to providing relief to American families from rising health care bills.

We began that process in February in the budget overview, which included a $634 billion health care reserve fund -- a substantial down payment toward health care reform. On Monday, when we release the Summary Tables and Analytical Perspectives of the Budget, you will see that the full Budget does exactly the same thing and includes $635 billion in a health care reserve fund.

As in the February overview, about half of the health care reserve fund in the full Budget comes from savings in Medicare and Medicaid that would improve the health care system’s efficiency and quality. There is a change (the "$635 billion" in the above paragraph is not a typo). In the time since we released the February overview, the health care reforms in the reserve fund have been re-estimated to save about $7 billion less over the next 10 years, while the limitation on itemized deductions has been re-estimated to save about $51 billion less over this period. We closed this gap by dedicating some other tax enforcement measures and loophole closers totaling $60 billion. This then brings the reserve fund in the full Budget to almost exactly the same total as before.

How do we do it?

(select link in title above to read more @ Whitehouse.gov also, follow the Obama administration on Twitter and Facebook)