Medicare Growth is Really Low

Aaron Carroll:

Medicare growth is really low: ... It turns out that actual Medicare growth for the first eight months of the fiscal year has been 0.3%. That’s amazing. But, of course, there are some temporary policies in place that have been restraining spending. These include things like the seqester, some ACA stuff, and frozen means-tested Medicare premium income thresholds.* Without these policies in place, growth would have been 2.5%. ...

Economic growth is 3.9%. That means that Medicare growth is nowhere near the GDP + 1% or so that would be needed to see the IPAB kick in. This has important, and positive, effects on the long-term federal budget outlook.

*Of course, there are temporary ACA-related things like the filling-in donut hole, which are increasing spending as well, so actual growth is likely less. Amazing!