May 31, 2013
The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) recently released A Bipartisan Rx for Patient-Centered Care and System-Wide Cost Containment, which included a multitude of recommendations to spur improvement in system-wide health care quality and efficiency. This effort, led by former senators Tom Daschle, Bill Frist, Pete Domenici, and former OMB and CBO Director Dr. Alice Rivlin, focused extensively on reforms to Medicare that would result in higher quality care and reduce cost growth for beneficiaries and taxpayers. A central aim of our recommendations, which incorporate an SGR fix, is to create strong incentives for the full range of providers to transition from the volume-based payment methods that predominate in Medicare today to advanced payment and delivery models that promote accountability for quality outcomes, patient satisfaction and value.
Social Security has served as a retirement foundation for hundreds of millions of American workers ever since its creation in 1935. Today, low-income seniors – those with incomes below $20,100 – receive over 80 percent of their income from the Social Security monthly check. Even for those in the middle quintile – with incomes between $20,100 and $32,600 – over two-thirds of their monthly income is a result of Social Security. By any reasonable standard, Social Security has been the most successful antipoverty program in the nation’s history. The program currently serves over 47 million Americans, and it must continue to serve as a social safety net in the future.
Over the next 10 years, our proposals would result in approximately $560 billion in deficit reduction. Our Medicare reforms would achieve roughly $300 billion in net savings within that time frame, and over second decade (2024-2033), our proposals would result in another almost $1 trillion in budgetary savings to the Medicare program. These savings estimates are net of the cost of fixing the dysfunctional Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) physician payment formula.
The central “good news” finding from BPC’s Strategic Energy Policy Initiative is that the United States enters the 21st century in a position of energy strength. Domestic oil, natural gas, and renewable energy production are up, while energy imports are down; new energy development is driving a jobs boom in many parts of the country; and lower energy costs are helping the U.S. manufacturing sector recover. Many of these recent positive developments are linked to the advent of improved drilling technologies that have made it economical to access vast new reserves of hydrocarbons.
BPC Governors' Council Voices Support for S. 336, the Marketplace Fairness Act
Due to a Supreme Court decision, states can only require stores that have a physical presence in that state to collect state sales taxes. Importantly, these taxes are already owed by consumers under existing state ‘use tax’ laws, but are not being collected by the e-retailer. With the growth in online purchasing, states annually lose $24 billion in revenues. S. 336 would allow states to require e-retailers, as they do brick and mortar retailers, to collect these taxes.
In opening remarks at today’s House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security hearing, Subcommittee Chairman Richard Hudson (R-NC) highlighted a recent USA TODAY op-ed on airline security by Carie Lemack, director of the Bipartisan Policy Center's Homeland Security Project. Lemack’s op-ed, as well as her written statement, was submitted for the hearing record.
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