Congressional Budget Office (CBO) news and information

This year was anticipated as the final dash toward the 2014 rollout of the healthcare reform law's major provisions. But the healthcare industry is also coming to the realization that 2013 will probably be remembered for more fiscal fights and deep federal cuts.
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The panel that provides Congress with Medicare guidance sought to shield providers from looming payment cuts.
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With eight new plans approved, 17 states in all have received a tentative nod from the CMS to operate their own health insurance exchanges while two more will offer the insurance marketplaces with federal help. HHS provided conditional approval for seven more states—California, Hawaii, Idaho,...
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If something happens three times, some folks call that a trend. If it happens again and again over 10 years, it's a tradition—and not all traditions are good.
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Calculated to include the final 2013 CMS physician fee schedule, a new Congressional Budget Office estimate says that the cost of a one-year suspension of the scheduled 26.5% Medicare pay cut to physicians called for by the sustainable growth-rate formula has risen by more than 36%.
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Federal healthcare programs were prominent targets in a new Congressional Budget Office analysis of debt-reduction options for policymakers expected to tackle that issue soon.
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Reps. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) and Donna Christensen (D-Virgin Islands) introduced legislation that would change how the Congressional Budget Office looks at budget savings from wellness programs.
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The federal government could receive about $7 billion from the approximately 6 million Americans who will pay a penalty tax because they are uninsured in 2016, according to new CBO estimates.
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Between now and November, Republicans should frame their Medicare message first by telling voters the country has a serious problem with the decades-old healthcare program, a former Congressional Budget Office director said on the last day of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla.
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A $160 billion net decrease from prior projected federal healthcare spending estimates helped slow somewhat the federal government's expected accumulation of debt over the coming decade, the CBO says.
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