Medicare solvency: hearing before the Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives, One Hundred Seventh Congress, first session

OCLC Number: (OCoLC)48116183 Subject: Medicare -- Finance. Excerpt: ... of the event (four business days notice is requested). Questions with regard to special accommodation needs in general (including availability of Committee materials in alternative formats) may be directed to the Committee as noted above. <F-dash> Chairman Thomas. The Committee will come to order. The Chair was interested in having a Ways and Means hearing following the joint hearing with the Senate Finance Committee on the Medicare and Social Security reports for principally one reason. There may be other reasons that members wish to focus on. But when there is a change in the estimating procedure, especially when it is a change which increases the concerns about the solvency of the program, the Chair believes that it is useful to spend a few minutes talking about the background, the history of, the intention of the decision to make the change. There is so much in this process which is not political or partisan that we do not focus on that the Chair thought that if we would bring the Medicare Actuary before us, Mr. Foster, who has been very helpful to us in the past, and I do want to personally say, Mr. Foster, thank you for the contributions you made to the bipartisan Commission on the Reform of Medicare at the time we were grappling with what does the future look like and how do you predict it, to shed light on why we changed the way we estimate the cost of Medicare. With us also is Mr. Crippen of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) because they had adopted the methodology prior to that. I would say that without objection we would move directly to any comments they might have and then throw it open to questions by members, hopefully focusing on the rationale for, the reason for and the consequences of the change of the estimating procedure for the Medicare Trust Fund. And first I would recognize the Chief Act...