CBO Director: Affordable Care Act Is Slowing Medicare Spending

CBO director Douglas Elmendorf reiterated that the payment changes in the Affordable Care Act will slow the growth of Medicare spending, during testimony this afternoon before the deficit super committee:

Last month, the office released a budget outlook, which found that “growth in spending will be restrained by reductions in updates to payment rates that were included in the 2010 health care legislation and by the program’s sustainable growth rate mechanism, which, under current law, is projected to reduce payments to physicians by about 30 percent in 2012 and by additional amounts thereafter.”