NEWS FLASH

CBO: Medicare Spending Growth Remains Slow | In an update to a January report, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that Medicare spending is growing more slowly than expected for the third year in a row. CBO Director Doug Elmendorf said the slower Medicare growth is consistent with the slower growth of health care costs in general, but he said the reason behind the slowdown is unclear. “Presumably, the weak state of the economy is a factor, but given the magnitude of the slowdown in national health spending and the timing of that slowdown…we and most analysts think there are probably structural factors at work as well,” he said.