Health Care Spending in the President’s Budget

What’s in the President Obama’s $4 trillion budget proposal for 2016? Billions in new health care spending. Christopher Holt, Brittany La Couture and Tara O’Neill of the American Action Forum break down the president’s health care budget:

– Compared to last year’s budget, the proposal includes an additional $4.8 billion in discretionary funding for the Department of Health and Human Services, totaling $83.8 billion.
– It calls for a $77.8 billion increase in mandatory health spending in 2016.
– Over the next decade, Medicaid spending would increase 62 percent, totaling $567 billion in 2025.

The budget expects $423 billion in Medicare savings over a decade, but Holt, La Couture and O’Neill say there are problems with several of the proposed reforms. For example, it proposes new regulations on biologics, which the administration says would produce $16 billion in savings but which the researchers say would negatively impact innovation.

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