U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402–0001

64–943 PDF 2011

FULFILLING THE MISSION OF HEALTH 

AND RETIREMENT SECURITY 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, MARCH 17, 2011 

Serial No. 112–7 

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Budget 

( 

Available on the Internet: 

www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/committee.action?chamber=house&committee=budget 
(II) 

COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET 

PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin, Chairman 

SCOTT GARRETT, New Jersey 

MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho 

JOHN CAMPBELL, California 

KEN CALVERT, California 

W. TODD AKIN, Missouri 

TOM COLE, Oklahoma 

TOM PRICE, Georgia 

TOM MCCLINTOCK, California 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah 

MARLIN A. STUTZMAN, Indiana 

JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma 

DIANE BLACK, Tennessee 

REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin 

BILL FLORES, Texas 

MICK MULVANEY, South Carolina 

TIM HUELSKAMP, Kansas 

TODD C. YOUNG, Indiana 

JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan 

TODD ROKITA, Indiana 

FRANK C. GUINTA, New Hampshire 

ROB WOODALL, Georgia 

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland, 

Ranking Minority Member 

ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, Pennsylvania 

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio 

LLOYD DOGGETT, Texas 

EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon 

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota 

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky 

BILL PASCRELL, JR., New Jersey 

MICHAEL M. HONDA, California 

TIM RYAN, Ohio 

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida 

GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

HEATH SHULER, North Carolina 

PAUL TONKO, New York 

KAREN BASS, California 

PROFESSIONAL STAFF

AUSTIN SMYTHE, Staff Director 

THOMAS S. KAHN, Minority Staff Director 
(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held in Washington, DC, March 17, 2011 ............................................... 1 

Hon. Paul Ryan, Chairman, Committee on the Budget ................................ 1 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 2 

Hon. Chris Van Hollen, ranking minority member, House Committee 

on the Budget ................................................................................................ 3 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 4 

Alice M. Rivlin, the Brookings Institution and Georgetown University ...... 6 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 7 

Charles P. Blahous, research fellow, Hoover Institution and Public Trustee for Social Security .................................................................................... 11 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 13 

James C. Capretta, fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center ........................ 19 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 21 

Paul N. Van de Water, senior fellow, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities ................................................................................................................. 27 

Prepared statement of ............................................................................... 28 

Hon. Allyson Y. Schwartz, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Pennsylvania, prepared statement of ...................................................... 67 

Hon. Bill Pascrell, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the State 

of New Jersey, question submitted for the record ...................................... 67 

(1) 

FULFILLING THE MISSION OF HEALTH 

AND RETIREMENT SECURITY 

THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 2011 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET, Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:00 a.m., in room 210, 

Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Paul Ryan, [Chairman of the 

Committee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Ryan, Garrett, Akin, McClintock, 

Stutzman, Lankford, Black, Mulvaney, Huelskamp, Young, Rokita, 

Van Hollen, Schwartz, Doggett, Yarmuth, Pascrell, Honda, Moore, 

Castor, Tonko, and Bass. 

Chairman RYAN. All right, let’s get started, we like to start on 

time around here. So, first of all, I want to thank the witnesses. 

The hearing will come to order. I will start with a brief opening 

statement, then turn it over to my friend, Mr. Van Hollen. 

Let me just say, welcome to this important hearing on the future 

of our country. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are very 

important programs that provide health and retirement security to 

millions of Americans. The principle aim of this hearing is to make 

clear that trying to protect the government’s major entitlement programs by simply maintaining the status quo is, in fact, the surest 

way to destroy them. 

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are growing at 

unsustainable rates, building up trillions of dollars in debt and unfunded promises that jeopardize the programs themselves, and the 

federal budget, and, ultimately, the entire U.S. economy. The 

longer Congress waits, the more we kick the can, the worse the 

problems become, leading to an inevitable crisis that will force 

deep, wrenching, sudden changes with profound effects on program 

beneficiaries. 

The fundamental missions of these programs, to ensure health 

and retirement security for all Americans, can be achieved, but 

only through honest leadership and real reform. By taking action 

now, Congress can develop gradual prospective changes, keeping 

promises to those now in or near retirement, while securing the 

program for future retirees. 

I thank the distinguished panel of bipartisan experts for joining 

us today to share their views on the sustainability of our safety 

net. I am happy to see my friend, a woman I have profound respect 

for, Alice Rivlin, with whom I worked on the President’s fiscal commission to put forward solutions to the unsustainable trajectory of 

federal health care spending. Few people in Washington know more 
2 

about these issues and have more credibility in addressing them 

than Alice does. Jim Capretta, former Associate Director at OMB, 

is also with us today. Few, in my mind, have made as compelling 

a case as Jim on the path forward to advance real reform. 

And you cannot have a hearing like this without having Chuck 

Blahous, who is one of the nation’s foremost experts in retirement 

programs, and a trustee of the Social Security program. He will 

give us his thoughts. And I am also happy to have Paul Van de 

Water of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. While we do 

not always agree on the policy path forward, Paul, I welcome your 

thoughts in advance, and I appreciate your informed contribution 

to the debate. 

For the past several months, a number of us have been saying, 

We need to have a serious, honest conversation with the American 

people about these problems. Well, the time for that conversation 

is now. And I firmly believe that the American people are ready for 

this. They have had enough instability in their lives lately, and 

they deserve a federal health and retirement safety net that they 

can actually count on. 

If Congress wants to avoid defaulting on federal health and retirement programs, it must advance solutions that free the nation 

from the shadow of debt, strengthen its health and retirement safety net, and protect those in and near retirement from severe disruptions. If, and only if, we act now, reforms can be phased in 

gradually, conducive to economic growth and consistent with our 

historic commitment of leaving the next generation of Americans 

with a more prosperous future and secure nation. With that, I want 

to yield to my friend, the Ranking Member Mr. Van Hollen, for an 

opening statement. 

[The prepared statement of Paul Ryan follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. PAUL RYAN, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET

Welcome all, to this important hearing on the future of our country. 

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security provide health and retirement security 

for millions of Americans. The principal aim of this hearing is to make clear that 

trying to ‘‘protect’’ the government’s major entitlement programs by maintaining the 

status quo is, in fact, the surest way to destroy them. 

Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are growing at unsustainable rates, 

building up trillions of dollars in debt and unfunded promises that jeopardize the 

programs themselves, the Federal budget, and—ultimately—the entire U.S. economy. 

The longer Congress waits, the worse these problems become, leading to an inevitable crisis that will force deep, wrenching, sudden changes with profound effects 

on program beneficiaries. 

The fundamental missions of these programs—to ensure health and retirement security for all Americans—can be achieved, but only through honest leadership and 

real reform. 

By taking action now, Congress can develop gradual, prospective changes—keeping promises to those now in or near retirement, while securing the programs for 

future retirees. 

I thank the distinguished panel of bipartisan experts for joining us today to share 

their views on the sustainability of our safety net. 

I am happy to see Alice Rivlin, with whom I worked on the President’s fiscal commission to put forward solutions to the unsustainable trajectory of federal health 

spending. Few people in Washington know more about these issues and have more 

credibility in addressing them than Alice does. 

Jim Capretta, a former associate director at the Office of Management and Budget, is also with us today. Few in my mind have made as compelling a case as Jim 

on the path forward to advance real reform. 
3 

Chuck Blahous is one of the nation’s foremost experts in retirement security—this 

hearing would not be complete without getting his thoughts on how to save these 

critical programs. 

And we’ll hear from Paul van de Water of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. While we don’t always agree on the policy path forward, I welcome his 

thoughts to advance an informed debate on this critical issue. 

For the past several months, a number of us have been saying we need to have 

a serious, honest conversation with the American people about these problems. 

The time for that conversation is now—and I firmly believe the American people 

are ready for it. They have had enough instability in their lives lately, and they deserve a federal health and retirement safety net they can count on. 

If Congress wants to avoid defaulting on federal health and retirement programs, 

it must advance solutions that free the nation from the shadow of debt, strengthen 

its health and retirement safety net, and protect those in or near retirement from 

disruptions. 

If—and only if—we act now, reforms can be phased in and gradual; conducive to 

economic growth and consistent with our historic commitment of leaving the next 

generation of Americans with a more prosperous and secure nation. 

With that, I will yield to Ranking Member Van Hollen for an opening statement. 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Happy St. Patrick’s 

Day to you and others. And I want to join the Chairman in welcoming our witnesses here today. 

As the Chairman said, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid 

are essential to the health and retirement security of millions of 

Americans. The challenge before us is to make these vital programs 

sustainable over the long haul, given the spending growth trends. 

These trends, as we all know, are due to aging of our population 

and the fact that per capita health care costs, both private and 

public, have grown faster than the economy. So I hope we can come 

together to ensure that the long-term viability and integrity of 

these programs can be put in place as we put our nation on a fiscally stable path. 

About one year ago, about one year ago, many in this Congress 

began to tackle the challenge of rising per capita health costs by 

enacting the Affordable Care Act. That law begins to address what 

every expert knows; that the rising cost of health care is not 

unique to Medicare and Medicaid. Those costs are endemic to the 

entire health care system. In fact, for 30 years, the per beneficiary 

spending in Medicare and Medicaid has grown at virtually the 

same rate as those for the overall health system. And over the last 

decade, the Medicaid per beneficiary costs actually grew more slowly than the rest of the health care system. By contrast, in the private market for individual coverage, premiums more than doubled 

between the years 2000 and 2008, as insurance industry profits 

quadrupled. 

The Affordable Care Act will begin to bring down the per capita 

costs of health care throughout the system, including in Medicare. 

As the independent, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has 

told this committee, it will also reduce the federal deficit by $210 

billion over 10 years, and by more than a trillion over 20 years. It 

includes virtually every cost containment provision recommended 

by health care experts. Dr. Rivlin and Dr. Van de Water made 

those points in a January 6, 2011 letter to this committee, where 

they joined others in warning that, and I quote, Repealing the Affordable Care Act would cause needless economic harm and would 

set back efforts to create a more disciplined and more effective 

health care system, end of quote. 
4 

The health care reform law includes numerous Medicare reforms, 

including mechanisms to slow down the growth of systems costs, 

new tools to crack down on fraud, and the elimination of excessive 

taxpayer subsidies to manage care insurance companies. The response to these important reforms was a barrage of campaign attack ads aimed at seniors, accusing Democrats of slashing Medicare. So Democrats here welcome an honest debate about how we 

can strengthen and sustain Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. We recognize that a variety of measures are necessary to accomplish that objective, but we will vigorously oppose any effort to 

undermine the integrity of those programs. 

You do not need to be a history buff to know that Republicans 

in earlier Congresses fought the establishment of Medicare and Social Security just as ferociously as they are fighting the Affordable 

Care Act today. And we will fight any budget plan that extends 

deficit-busting tax breaks for millionaires and the wealthiest Americans and at the same time, rolls back Medicare and Medicaid 

health services, and Social Security protections for seniors and the 

disabled, in the name of deficit reduction. 

And, Mr. Chairman, that brings me to my last point. As you have 

said, and I think everybody on this committee knows, any serious 

and comprehensive approach to reducing the deficits and the debt 

must ensure that we do not undermine our economic recovery, and 

requires us to examine the full range of ideas proposed by the 

President’s bipartisan fiscal commission, as well as the RivlinDomenici debt reduction task force. 

So I hope that before this committee considers its 2012 budget, 

we will also have hearings, and we have had some discussions, I 

know we have a tight schedule, but I hope we will also have hearings on the major issue of tax reform and tax earmarks, as well as 

the recommendation of both those bipartisan groups, regarding 

some of the wasteful and unnecessary spending in the Pentagon 

and some of the national security agencies. Otherwise, we will be 

sending the message that, despite the good work of the bipartisan 

commission and the Bipartisan Policy Center, the only targets for 

deficit reduction are the Domestic Discretionary Programs, a very 

small 12 percent, that we spend a lot of time debating and the very 

important issues that are the subject of our hearing today. So I 

hope we will not limit ourselves just to those two areas, but expand 

our conversation as we put together our budget. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Chris Van Hollen follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, RANKING MINORITY MEMBER, HOUSE COMMITTEE ON THE BUDGET

I join Chairman Ryan in welcoming our witnesses today. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are essential to the health and retirement security of millions 

of Americans. The challenge before us is to make these vital programs sustainable 

over the long run given the spending growth trends. These trends, as we all know, 

are due to the aging of our population and the fact that per capita health care 

costs—both private and public—have grown faster than the economy. 

So I hope we can come together to ensure the long-term viability and integrity 

of these programs as we put our nation on a fiscally stable path. 

One year ago, many in this Congress began to tackle the challenge of rising per 

capita health costs by enacting the Affordable Care Act. That law begins to address 

what every health expert knows—that the rising cost of health care is not unique 

to Medicare and Medicaid. Those costs are endemic to the entire health care system. 
5 

In fact, for 30 years, the per beneficiary spending in Medicare and Medicaid has 

grown at virtually the same rate as those for the overall health system—and over 

the last decade the Medicaid per beneficiary costs actually grew much more slowly 

than the rest of the health care system. By contrast, in the private market for individual coverage, premiums more than doubled between the years 2000 and 2008, 

as insurance industry profits quadrupled. 

The Affordable Care Act will begin to bring down the per capita costs of health 

care throughout the system—including in Medicare. As the independent, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has told this Committee, it will also reduce the 

federal deficit by $210 billion over 10 years and by more than $1 trillion over 20 

years. It includes virtually every cost containment provision recommended by health 

care experts. Dr. Rivlin and Dr. Van de Water made those points in a January 26, 

2011 letter to this Committee, where they joined others in warning that repealing 

the Affordable Care Act would cause needless economic harm and would set back 

efforts to create a more disciplined and more effective health care system. 

The health care reform law includes numerous Medicare reforms, including mechanisms to slow the growth of system costs, new tools to crack down on fraud, and 

the elimination of excessive taxpayer subsidies to managed care insurance companies. The response to these important reforms was a barrage of campaign attack 

ads, aimed at seniors, accusing Democrats of slashing Medicare. 

So Democrats welcome an honest debate about how we can strengthen and sustain Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. We recognize that a variety of measures are necessary to accomplish that objective. But we will vigorously oppose any 

effort to undermine the integrity of these programs. You don’t need to be a history 

buff to know that Republicans in earlier Congresses fought the establishment of 

Medicare and Social Security as ferociously as they are fighting the Affordable Care 

Act today. We will fight any budget plan that extends deficit-busting tax breaks for 

millionaires and at the same time rolls back critical Medicare and Medicaid health 

services and Social Security protections for seniors and the disabled in the name of 

deficit reduction. 

And that brings me to my last point, Mr Chairman. Any serious and comprehensive approach to reducing the deficits and the debt must ensure that we do not undermine our economic recovery and requires us to examine the full range of ideas 

proposed by the President’s Bipartisan Fiscal Commission as well as the RivlinDomenici Debt Reduction Task Force. So I hope that before the Budget Committee 

considers the 2012 budget, we will also have hearings on the major issue of tax reform and tax earmarks, as well as the recommendations of both bipartisan groups 

regarding some of the wasteful and unnecessary spending in the Pentagon and some 

of the national security agencies. Otherwise, we will be sending the message that, 

despite the good work of the Bipartisan Commission and Bipartisan Policy Center, 

the only targets for deficit reduction are domestic discretionary programs—a very 

small sliver of the budget—that we have spent weeks debating on the floor and the 

health and retirement security programs we are focusing on today. I hope that is 

not the case. 

Chairman RYAN. Thank you, Mr. Van Hollen. As you know, we 

are on tight schedules around here, but I want to do everything we 

can to get all of these issues out on the table, and over the course 

of our session, we will clearly do that. That is just, as you and I 

discussed, kind of a scheduling complication. 

I want to ask our witnesses, you have all testified here before, 

if you could summarize your testimony into five minutes. Your full 

written statements will be included in the record. And we will just 

start with Dr. Rivlin and then move on down the line, Dr. Rivlin, 

the floor is yours. 
6 

STATEMENTS OF ALICE M. RIVLIN, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION AND GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY; CHARLES P. 

BLAHOUS, RESEARCH FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION AND 

PUBLIC TRUSTEE FOR SOCIAL SECURITY; JAMES C. 

CAPRETTA, FELLOW, ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER; 

PAUL N. VAN DE WATER, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER ON 

BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES 

STATEMENT OF ALICE M. RIVLIN 

Ms. RIVLIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you for holding this important hearing. As you and Mr. Van Hollen have emphasized, Americans are counting on Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. And the biggest challenge facing budget policymakers 

is to ensure that the promises represented by these programs are 

met in ways that are affordable and fiscally sustainable for the 

long run. 

In the last year and a half, I have served on both the commissions that have been mentioned. And I will talk today mainly on, 

about the proposals for Medicare reform in the task force on debt 

reduction that I co-chaired with my good friend Pete Domenici. The 

challenge for Medicare reform is to restrain the growth of this large 

federal program in ways that help the whole health care system deliver care more efficiently and effectively, and to do this without 

shifting the cost of caring for Medicare beneficiaries to other payers, or causing providers to drop out of Medicare. 

Medicare, as you know, is still largely a fee-for-service system in 

which the government is obligated to pay the bills presented for 

specified services to eligible beneficiaries. There are few incentives 

now built into the system for providers to deliver care efficiently 

or effectively, costs vary widely from one provider to another, and 

the government has no way of restraining the total cost of the program. 

The Affordable Care Act includes important provisions aimed at 

improving health outcomes and reducing cost growth. And I believe, as Representative Van Hollen emphasized, that it would be 

a mistake to repeal the Affordable Care Act. However, the impact 

and timing of these reforms is still uncertain. And therefore, the 

bipartisan policy task force recommended several cost-saving reforms in the short run, followed by a gradual transition of Medicare 

to a premium support, or defined contribution program, which 

would incent efficient delivery, while controlling the rate of growth 

of Medicare costs. 

That means that, beginning in 2018, Medicare beneficiaries 

would have a choice of remaining in the fee-for-service Medicare, 

or going to a Medicare Exchange, where they could choose among 

competing private health plans. The health plan would receive a 

fixed payment, risk-adjusted for the age, health, and status of the 

beneficiary, and would not be able to cherry-pick the least costly 

beneficiaries. 

In the first year, the subsidy for those choosing the Exchange 

would be equal to the average subsidy of traditional fee-for-service 

Medicare. In subsequent years, the growth of the subsidy for both 

options would be limited to the growth of GDP, plus one percent. 

Now this is lower than the projected growth. If the cost of fee-for- 
7 

*The views expressed are those of the author and are not attributable to the institutions with 

which she is associated. 

service Medicare rises faster than the GDP plus one, those electing 

to stay in that system would pay a premium to cover the additional 

cost. 

I think there are two reasons for shifting to a premium support 

model for Medicare. One is that the total subsidy would be controllable. Taxpayers would be making a defined contribution. Congress 

could, of course, vote to increase the subsidy faster than GDP 

growth plus one, but the budgetary consequences of doing so would 

be explicit. The other reason is that competition on a well-managed 

exchange can be expected to attract beneficiaries to health plans 

that organize themselves to provide the most effective care at the 

lowest price. The Medicare Exchange would be charged with providing the beneficiary with clear customer-friendly information 

about the plan’s benefits, and costs, and health outcomes. 

Is that at five minutes? I cannot see it. 

Chairman Ryan, as you know, and I have drafted a skeletal 

version of the premium support proposal for consideration by the 

Simpson-Bowles Commission. We were not sufficiently persuasive. 

But that plan differs slightly from the Domenici-Rivlin version, in 

that it would phase in much slower. The proposed premium support resembles the current structure of Medicare Advantage, but 

we think there are important differences, and that it would work 

considerably better. 

I will leave it at that, although my written statement does emphasize both Medicare reforms, which I think are more difficult, 

the fact that it is important to cap and phase out the employer-provided health exclusion under the tax code, and we strongly support 

Social Security reform to make Social Security safe and secure for 

future beneficiaries. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Ms. Rivlin follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF ALICE M. RIVLIN, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION

AND GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY* 

CHAIRMAN RYAN, REPRESENTATIVE VAN HOLLEN, AND MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE: Thank you for the opportunity to testify before the Committee today at this 

very important hearing on ‘‘Fulfilling the Mission of Health and Retirement Security.’’ Health and retirement security are essential to the well-being of the American 

population. Decades of congressional actions by both political parties created Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which contribute enormously to that security 

and have very broad public support. Americans are counting on those programs to 

be there for them when they need them. The biggest challenge facing budget policy 

makers is to find ways to ensure that the promises represented by these programs 

are met in ways that are affordable and fiscally sustainable for the long run, as the 

population ages and health care becomes increasingly expensive. 

In the last year and a half, I have had the privilege of serving on the National 

Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (the Simpson Bowles Commission). 

I have also co-chaired, with my friend former Senator Pete Domenici, the Bipartisan 

Policy Center’s Task Force on Debt Reduction. Both groups concluded that the federal budget is on a dangerously unsustainable path and that we must act decisively 

soon to reduce the risk of a debt crisis that could severely damage our future prosperity and global influence. Both reports emphasized that spending under Medicare, 

Medicaid, and to a lesser extent Social Security are projected to rise faster than revenues over the next several decades, creating unsustainable increases in deficits and 

debt. Both reports proposed reforms in these three programs, but both concluded 

that all parts of the budget (including domestic and defense appropriations, other 

mandatory spending, tax expenditures and revenues) must also play a part in reduc-
8 

ing future deficits and restraining the growth of debt. In the interests of time and 

clarity, I will talk today about the recommendations of the Domenici-Rivlin Task 

Force with respect to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. 

MEDICARE

Rapid increases in health care spending—due to ever-expanding medical capabilities and rising demand by an aging population combined with an inefficient delivery 

system—are already straining the federal budget. Indeed, they are straining all 

budgets, including those of states, localities, businesses and families. A common 

health care delivery system serves both Medicare beneficiaries and those with private insurance. Hence, the challenge of Medicare reform is to restrain the growth 

of this large federal spending program in ways that help the whole health care system deliver care more efficiently and effectively—and to do this without shifting the 

costs of caring for Medicare beneficiaries to other payers or causing providers to 

drop out of Medicare. 

Medicare is still largely a fee-for-service (FFS) system, in which the government 

is obligated to pay the bills presented for specified services to eligible beneficiaries. 

There are few incentives built into the system for providers to deliver care efficiently or effectively, costs vary widely from one provider or area to another, and 

the government has no way to restrain the total cost of the program. There are 

major opportunities both to slow the growth of Medicare spending and for the program to provide leadership in improving health service delivery. 

The Affordable Care Act includes important provisions aimed at improving health 

outcomes and reducing cost growth: authorizing Medicare to contract with accountable care organizations on the basis of shared savings and value-based payments 

to providers; pilot projects to try out other payment reforms; research on effectiveness of treatments; and development of information technology. However, the impact and timing of these efforts is still uncertain. Therefore, the Task Force recommended several cost-saving reforms in the short run followed by a gradual transition of Medicare to a ‘‘premium support’’ or defined contribution program, which 

would incent efficient delivery while controlling the rate of growth of total Medicare 

costs. 

For the short-term, the Task Force proposed these measures: 

• Gradually raise Medicare Part B premiums from 25 to 35 percent of total program costs (over five years); 

• Use Medicare’s buying power to increase rebates from pharmaceutical companies; 

• Modernize Medicare’s benefits package, including the copayment structure; and 

• Bundle Medicare’s payments for post-acute care in order to increase incentives 

for efficiency and cost reduction. 

Beginning 2018 Medicare beneficiaries would have a choice of remaining in FFS 

Medicare or going to a Medicare Exchange, where they could choose among competing private health plans. The health plan would receive a fixed payment, riskadjusted for the age and health status of the beneficiary and would not be able to 

cherry pick the least costly beneficiaries. In the first year, the subsidy for those 

choosing the exchange would be equal to the average subsidy for traditional FFS 

Medicare. In subsequent years, the growth in the subsidy for both options would be 

limited to growth of GDP (five-year average) plus one percent. This is lower than 

the baseline projection of GDP plus 1.7 percentage points. If the cost of FFS Medicare rises faster than GDP plus one percent, those electing to stay in that system 

would have to pay a premium to cover the additional cost. 

There are two reasons for shifting to a premium support model for Medicare. One 

is that the total subsidy would be controllable. Taxpayers would be making a defined contribution. Congress could, of course, vote to increase the subsidy faster 

than GDP growth plus one percent, but the budgetary consequences of doing so 

would be explicit. The other reason is that competition on a well managed exchange 

can be expected to attract beneficiaries to health plans that organize themselves to 

provide the most effective care at the lowest price. The Medicare Exchange would 

be charged with providing the beneficiary with clear, customer friendly information 

about each plan’s benefits, cost and health outcomes. 

Chairman Ryan and I drafted a skeletal version of Medicare Premium Support 

for consideration by the Simpson-Bowles Commission. The Ryan-Rivlin version 

would phase in much slower than Domenici-Rivlin, because it would affect only 

newly eligible Medicare beneficiaries beginning in 2021. This version would not offer 

premium support to those already in Medicare (although it would presumably retain 

Medicare Advantage) and would not retain FFS Medicare as an option for new en-
9 

rollees. Hence, the transition would take much longer than the Domenici-Rivlin 

version. 

While the proposed premium support model resembles the current structure of 

Medicare Advantage, there are important differences. Competition among plans 

would be enhanced by creating a federal Medicare Exchange, which would increase 

the competitiveness of the market, leading to lower premiums. While Medicare currently informs beneficiaries of available Medicare Advantage plan choices and plan 

performance through a web site and other means, one-on-one marketing by Medicare’s private plans is a dominant model for enrollment. A more formal exchange 

could make it easier for beneficiaries to compare and select among the plans available to them in head-to-head comparisons, reduce sales and marketing costs of the 

plans, and create better value for enrollees. Improvements will also emerge as states 

develop exchanges for individuals and small employers under the Affordable Care 

Act. The proposed Medicare Exchange would also provide incentives for plans to develop products that will save beneficiaries money. Today, if a Medicare Advantage 

plan has very low costs, it cannot pay a rebate to enrollees; instead, it must increase 

benefits. Under the proposed Medicare Exchange plans could offer beneficiaries relief from rising Medicare premiums, creating additional market incentives for efficiency. 

Asking beneficiaries to pay more for their Medicare coverage (or shift to a lowercost plan) mirrors what has happened in private insurance over the past decade, 

with increases in patient cost sharing to keep premium growth from exceeding income growth by too large a margin. Employers have generally opted to increase patient cost sharing rather than increase the percentage of the premium that employees contribute. The former keeps employees enrolled in the plan and encourages 

more judicious use of health services. 

MEDICAID REFORMS

Medicaid, the program that provides health coverage to millions of low-income 

Americans, poses a different set of challenges because it is jointly funded by the federal and state governments, but administered by each state. 

In order to control Medicaid costs in the short term, the Task force recommended 

removing barriers that states face in providing benefits to ‘‘dual eligibles’’ (those eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid) through managed care plans. For the longer 

run the Task Force offered several approaches to reducing the amount by which 

Medicaid is growing faster than the economy. The goal would be to reduce annual 

per-beneficiary cost growth by 1 percentage point. 

One approach to achieving these savings would be to discontinue the shared financing arrangement between the federal and state governments. The system of 

matching federal payments that is currently in place has led to ‘‘gaming’’ of the system, where states have an incentive to run up higher health care costs in order to 

get more federal matching payments. At the same time, the federal government 

doesn’t bear the full cost when it chooses to expand Medicaid benefits. The Task 

Force proposes to end these perverse incentives by allocating program responsibilities between the federal government and the states—in a budget neutral manner— 

so that each level of government would fully finance and administer its assigned 

components of the Medicaid program. This would require a complex set of negotiations between the federal and state governments but, in the end, would restore incentives for cost containment, and slow future growth. 

There are other approaches to slowing the growth of Medicaid spending while continuing to provide adequate health care for the low income population. States could 

be given more leeway to design their own programs, either through block grants 

(with maintenance of effort requirements) or through waivers under the existing 

program. Ultimately, when the state health care exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act are running well, Medicaid beneficiaries could be transitioned to the 

exchanges. 

CAP AND PHASE OUT THE EMPLOYER PROVIDED HEALTH INSURANCE EXCLUSION

The Task Force plan includes an essential third component to reining in rapidly 

rising health care costs. As you know, the tax code currently excludes from income, 

health insurance benefits provided by employers. Our Task Force proposes to cap 

the exclusion of employer-provided health benefits in 2018, and then phase it out 

over 10 years. There is broad agreement among health care economists that this will 

incent employers and employees to select more cost-effective health plans. In addition, because this is the largest tax expenditure in the federal budget, its phase-out 

will reduce the federal debt by an appreciable amount. Moreover, it will strengthen 

Social Security by increasing payroll revenues to the Social Security Trust Funds. 
10 

Federal spending on health care and loss of revenue through the exclusion is so 

large that addressing it is critical to success of efforts to reduce the deficit enough 

to control federal debt. Large federal deficit reductions in health will require policies 

that slow the rate of growth of spending overall. Changing the tax treatment of employer-based health insurance and Medicare premium support are two steps that 

the Task Force considers to have the largest long term potential. But slowing the 

rate of growth of health spending is so challenging that many other policies should 

be pursued as well. 

SOCIAL SECURITY

Finally, we must address Social Security and do it soon. Social Security, while 

separately funded by payroll taxes, is not in sound fiscal shape for the long run. 

Since putting Social Security back on a firm foundation will make only a modest 

contribution to reducing long run deficits, deficit reduction is not the central motivation for fixing Social Security. The right reason for saving Social Security is to reassure all Americans that this hugely successful program is solidly funded and will 

be there for the millions who depend on it when they need it. The main reason for 

acting now rather than later is simply that the sooner we act the less drastic adjustments we have to make. These adjustments can involve revenue increases, future 

benefit reductions (with or without retirement age changes), or some of each. They 

need not be large if they are done quickly and they need not have a significant effect 

on those currently retired or close to retirement. 

Those who argue that Social Security should not be part of a deficit reduction 

plan, sometimes point out that Social Security has been running surpluses for decades. Those surpluses were invested in Treasury bonds, which meant the government was borrowing from Social Security to fund other spending. Now that the time 

has come to redeem those bonds, they say, Social Security should not be ‘‘punished’’ 

by having to share in the reduction of future deficits. But this reasoning misses the 

point. Putting Social Security on a sound fiscal footing is not ‘‘punishing’’ the system 

or its beneficiaries. The bonds held by Social Security are obligations of the United 

States and will be paid—even though Treasury will have to borrow to pay them. 

But current and future workers need to know that Social Security will be there for 

them, and the best way to reassure them is to act now to adjust future benefits and 

revenues. Taking immediate action is the right thing to do for future Social Security 

beneficiaries. That such action will also modestly reduce long run deficits and show 

the world that our political system is not totally gridlocked is just icing on the cake. 

The President’s Fiscal Commission and our Debt Reduction Task Force both produced viable, solid plans to strengthen Social Security and ensure its long-term solvency. The Task Force plan would: 

• Gradually raise the amount of wages subject to payroll taxes (currently 

$106,800) over the next 38 years to reach the 1977 target of covering 90 percent 

of all wages; 

• Change the calculation of annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for benefits to more accurately reflect inflation (this technical change is proposed for all 

COLA adjustments in the budget, including the indexation of tax brackets); 

• Slightly reduce the growth in benefits compared to current law for approximately the top 25 percent of beneficiaries; 

• Beginning in 2023, index the benefit formula for increases in life expectancy, 

without changing either the age of full retirement or the early retirement age from 

those in current law and require the Social Security Administration to ensure that 

early retirees understand that they are opting for a lower monthly benefit. 

• Increase the minimum benefit for long-term, lower-wage earners, and protect 

the most vulnerable elderly with a modest benefit increase. 

• Cover newly hired state and local government workers under the Social Security system, beginning in 2020, to increase the universality of the program. 

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee, I want to thank you for the opportunity to discuss today the great importance of addressing entitlement reforms as 

soon as possible. Let me say in closing that they should be addressed in the context 

of a full and balanced debt reduction plan that also includes a multi-year freeze on 

defense and non-defense discretionary spending, and a reform of the tax code that 

raises more revenues but also dramatically simplifies the tax system and makes our 

tax laws more competitive and pro-growth. 

I urge you to be bold in developing your FY 2012 Budget Resolution and I am 

happy to assist in any way I can. I would be happy to answer your questions. 

Chairman RYAN. Mr. Blahous. 
11 

STATEMENT OF CHARLES P. BLAHOUS 

Mr. BLAHOUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, 

and all the members of the distinguished committee. It is an honor 

to appear before you today to discuss the challenges facing Social 

Security, which, as you both said in your opening statements, is a 

cornerstone of retirement security for millions of Americans. Pursuant to the five minute time limitation, I would just like to make 

three main points from my written testimony. 

First point is that, by any measure, Social Security faces a significant long term financing shortfall. Costs of the program are 

going to grow dramatically over the next couple of decades, as more 

baby boomers hit the retirement roles, so that under current law, 

by the 2030s, this one federal program alone would absorb roughly 

one out of every six taxable dollars that American workers earn. 

And even if we succeed in financing these rising costs within the 

general budget through that time, if we fail to act to address Social 

Security finances, the program will become insolvent in 2037, and 

benefits would be cut by 22 percent across the board. 

The second point I would make is that costs in Social Security 

are growing for three very specific reasons. The first of these is the 

aging of the population. The second is the method of financing the 

program. And the third is the current Social Security benefit formula. 

Social Security costs grow primarily because there will be many 

more beneficiaries to support as the baby boomers leave the ranks 

of workers and join the ranks of retirees. According to the 2010 

trustees report, we will have over 90 million beneficiaries by the 

mid-2030s, and we will only have two taxpaying workers to support 

each person receiving Social Security benefits. This is down from 

a ratio of over three to one just before the baby boomers began to 

retire. 

The second reason that costs grow is simply the way that we finance the program. The program is financed, benefits are paid 

from incoming tax revenues contributed by workers. Therefore, the 

program finances are especially sensitive to changes in the ratio of 

taxpaying workers to collecting beneficiaries. 

The third reason that costs rise is rooted in program amendments that were enacted in the 1970s. If we still had the benefit 

formula in place that was established by Franklin Roosevelt, we 

would not actually have a financing shortfall right now. But in the 

1970s, there were a series of benefit expansions, the most notable 

of which causes initial benefit payments to rise more rapidly than 

inflation. Basically, each succeeding class of Social Security beneficiaries is given benefits that are higher than the preceding class, 

relative to inflation. 

Now put these three factors together: population aging, the 

method of program financing, and the increase in per capita benefit 

levels; the result is a prescription for significantly rising tax burdens on younger generations. 

The third point I would make is simply that delay is very costly. 

Now this has become something of a cliche. You have probably 

heard a lot of analysts come in and say to elected decision makers 

that this is better done sooner, rather than later. But it is very im-
12 

portant to understand that there are real adverse consequences, 

real harm is caused to real people as we delay dealing with this. 

If we fix Social Security today, our choices would be comparatively benign. We could fix the shortfall entirely without changing 

benefits for people now in retirement, or on the verge of retirement. 

We could do it without raising taxes. Not everyone would prefer to 

do it that way, but we could do it without raising taxes. And we 

could also ensure, even if we did not raise taxes, that future beneficiaries get benefits that are at least as high as today’s retirees 

get, even relative to inflation. 

So our choices, in sum, are not that bad yet. But if you go to the 

opposite extreme, the no-action scenario, things look very bleak. 

There is the 22 percent benefit reduction that I referred to earlier. 

But I would submit to this committee that this is actually a gross 

understatement of how bad the costs of delay are. And the reason 

for that is that, I think we have something of a bipartisan consensus, that it is wrong to change benefits for people after they 

start collecting them. That it is not fair to cut the benefits of the 

95 year old widow. 

So we have to reframe the question; if we want any benefit 

changes we make to take place prospectively, then how soon do we 

have to start making them? Well, if you wait until 2037, you could 

wipe out the entirety of benefit payments to new retirees and still 

not balance the system. So you start working backwards, and asking yourselves, How soon do we have to get started? The answer 

is quite soon. If you do not want to raise taxes on workers, if you 

do not want to change benefits for people within five years of retirement, you probably need to legislate in just the next couple of 

years. Beyond that point, you almost certainly have to raise taxes 

substantially on workers, or affect people closer to retirement. 

Before I close, Mr. Chairman, I would just like to briefly address 

one objection that is often raised against dealing with Social Security. It is occasionally said that Social Security reform should not 

be pursued because the program is not a significant contributor to 

the larger federal deficit. I respectfully submit to this committee 

that this is not the best way to think about the Social Security 

problem. Even if it were true, and it is not true, by the way; Social 

Security is a significant contributor to the long term fiscal imbalance. But even if it were true, Social Security, as a self-financing 

program, has to be brought into balance. And this is more easily 

done sooner rather than later. 

These larger budget issues are very important, but they are primarily relevant to Social Security because they establish that we 

will not be able to tap general revenues in any significant way to 

bail out the Social Security program. And this only highlights the 

importance of Social Security being able to stand on its own. 

Now obviously you, as legislators, will have to make the best tactical judgments as to the best process. If separating Social Security 

from the larger budget discussion enables us to enact reforms more 

swiftly, this is a strong argument for separation. But if it causes 

us to delay action, then this would be a strong argument against 

it. 

In conclusion, I would simply summarize with sentences from an 

article I recently authored with Robert Greenstein of the Center on 
13 

1There are separate Trust Funds for the OASI (Old-Age and Survivors) and DI (Disability) 

programs, though public discussions often refer to the combined operations of the Funds. 

Budget and Policy Priorities, Social Security faces a significant 

shortfall, which policy makers would be better off addressing sooner rather than later. Reasonable and well-intentioned people will 

have differences over the best way to do so, but we have a common 

interest in doing it at the earliest possible time. Thank you. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Blahous follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF CHARLES P. BLAHOUS, RESEARCH FELLOW, 

HOOVER INSTITUTION AND PUBLIC TRUSTEE FOR SOCIAL SECURITY

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, and all of the members of this 

distinguished committee. It is an honor to appear before you today to discuss the 

challenges facing the federal Social Security program, a cornerstone of retirement 

security for millions of Americans. 

THE SOCIAL SECURITY FINANCING CHALLENGE

Social Security finances have many facets. Experts can and do differ on which aspects should be of greatest concern to elected policy makers. I will focus first in my 

written testimony on those aspects of program finances that I believe are broadly 

agreed upon. 

Taxes: Under current law, the vast majority of funds used to finance benefit payments at any given point in time is generated via a payroll tax upon covered wages. 

The total payroll tax upon wages is 12.4%. Though nominally divided into two 6.2 

point halves assessed respectively upon employer and employee, most economists 

agree that the entirety of the 12.4% tax is levied on the worker’s wage compensation. Wage earnings subject to this tax, as well as any benefit credits based on those 

earnings, are both capped. This cap reflects Social Security’s historic design of providing a floor of protection in the event of income loss due to old-age, disability, or 

death of a primary household wage earner. The current cap is $106,800 annually, 

and is indexed to grow generally with the national Average Wage Index (AWI). In 

addition to payroll taxation, a much smaller amount of incoming program revenue 

(about 3%) is generated via income taxation of Social Security benefits. 

The Trust Funds: Beyond revenue generated from current taxation, further authority and resources to finance benefit payments are provided by the Social Security Trust Funds.1 The economic significance of the Trust Funds is a source of persistent controversy. But though there is controversy over the Trust Funds’ economic 

meaning, there is much less so over what the Trust Funds literally contain; specifically, special-issue Treasury bonds. These bonds are on the one hand real assets to 

the Social Security program, backed by the full faith and credit of the federal government, while on the other they are equally a real obligation of the general budget 

accounts. If we look at the bonds from the perspective of the Trust Funds, they are 

assets. If we look at them from the perspective of the unified federal budget, and 

from the taxpayer perspective, they are a net wash. The total amount of the Trust 

Funds, now roughly $2.6 trillion, represents the interest-compounded value of past 

annual program balances, including the many years of surpluses since the 1980s. 

Benefits: Americans tend to think of retirement benefits first when thinking of Social Security. This is understandable given that the majority of benefit payments 

(about 63%) are made to retired workers. But Social Security also provides for a 

number of other forms of benefits as well, including disability benefits, spousal benefits, and benefits for widows, widowers and survivor children. Although there are 

differences in the methods of computing benefits for these respective populations, 

they all hinge in some fashion on the basic retirement benefit formula. The total 

value of one’s Social Security benefit is not solely a function of one’s own contributions. One’s benefit is instead a function of a formula written into the law. Social 

Security redistributes income in a large variety of ways: from higher earners to 

lower earners; from the shorter-lived to longer-lived; from two-earner couples to oneearner couples; and from younger generations to older ones, among other trends. 

The overriding problem we face is that the total amount of projected benefit obligations that would result under current formulas is significantly higher than the 

amount of tax revenues that the program would generate under current law. One 

way or the other, this imbalance between incoming revenues and scheduled benefits 

must be corrected. 
14 

2 Although I currently serve as a public Trustee, the 2010 report was published prior to my 

confirmation to serve. 3The Trust Funds’ balance on January 1, 2010, the date used for the calculations in the 2010 

Trustees’ Report. 4 In theory, program surpluses in some years could effectively offset deficits in other years if 

a foolproof mechanism could be established to ensure that revenue excesses in surplus years 

were always saved. This has not been the case in practice. 5 ‘‘Obligations’’ on this graph include scheduled benefit obligations beyond 2037, even though 

due to projected Trust Fund depletion in 2037, benefits would under current law be suddenly 

cut by 22% in that year. More recent projections from CBO indicate that the brief program surpluses projected in 2012-14 on this graph will not materialize. The Trustees are scheduled to 

update their own projections next month. 

The financing shortfall: Specific measurements of the Social Security financing 

shortfall vary from report to report. In my remarks I will focus primarily on the 

projections contained in the 2010 report of the Social Security Trustees.2 The updated 2011 Trustees’ report is scheduled to be released next month. As members of 

this committee are aware, the Congressional Budget Office has released more recent 

figures that show a further deterioration of near-term finances relative to the 2010 

Trustees’ projections. I will nevertheless draw upon the Trustees’ report’s projections 

for long-term finances because they contain some additional details about program 

operations, and because the Trustees’ report embodies the projection mechanism 

sanctioned by the Social Security Act. 

According to both the Trustees’ report and the Congressional Budget Office, Social 

Security expenditures began in 2010 to exceed incoming program tax revenue for 

the first time since the last major Social Security repairs in 1983. CBO estimated 

this 2010 cash deficit to be $37 billion; the Trustees’ updated estimate is likely to 

be available next month. Some of the cost growth that resulted in this deficit arose 

from the long-anticipated event of the large Baby Boomer generation beginning to 

enter retirement. The date of these annual deficits’ arrival was accelerated by the 

recent recession, which both depressed payroll tax collections and stimulated additional benefit claims, especially disability benefit claims. For multiple reasons, 

therefore, Social Security is now experiencing cash-flow shortfalls earlier than anticipated in any Trustees’ report issued since the 1983 reforms. 

Despite this shortfall of tax income relative to benefit obligations, Social Security 

is still able to meet benefit payments due to the positive balance in its Trust Funds. 

We are currently in a somewhat unusual period in that the balance of the Trust 

Funds continues to rise even as program tax income lags behind benefit obligations. 

This occurs because the annual interest credited to the Trust Funds continues to 

exceed the program’s annual cash shortfalls. As a result, part of the general government accounts’ annual payments of interest are now tapped immediately to pay current benefits, while the remainder adds to the balance of the Trust Funds. But 

while these interest payments increase the balance of the Funds, they do not reduce 

the unified budget deficit. Accordingly, Social Security operations added $37 billion 

to the unified federal deficit last year (according to CBO), and will add substantially 

more in the years to come. 

By any measure, Social Security faces a significant long-term financing shortfall. 

The 2010 Trustees’ report projected that the net excess of benefit obligations over 

incoming tax revenue over the following 75 years would equal $7.9 trillion in 

present value. Even after $2.5 trillion3 of additional general revenues is paid to redeem the assets in the Trust Funds through 2037, this would still leave Social Security with a 75-year shortfall of $5.4 trillion. This shortfall further increases beyond 

the 75-year period. 

Such summary figures over long spans of time are inherently imprecise and can 

obscure the more salient issue of program cost growth over time. As a number of 

bipartisan technical panels and advisory councils have noted, it is insufficient for 

Social Security merely to be in average balance over long spans of time, if that average aggregate balance consists of impracticable annual imbalances in different years 

of the valuation period.4 This is one reason why for over a decade now Social Security Administration evaluations of Social Security financing proposals have included 

measures not only of their averaged effects over 75 years, but also of whether they 

lead to sustainable annual program balances within the 75-year period. 

Figure 1 below shows the projected growth of annual program revenues and costs 

under current law as a percentage of each worker’s taxable wages, in comparison 

with rates over the last few decades.5 The cost of paying Social Security benefits 

absorbed roughly 11.5% of such wages in 2008, on the eve of the recession and the 

retirement of the Baby Boom generation. Costs will grow dramatically over the next 

two decades, resulting in a cost rate of roughly 16.7% by the mid-2030s. In other 

words, the cost of paying benefits under existing formulas in this one federal pro-
15 

gram alone would absorb roughly one out of every six taxable dollars that American 

workers earn. 

Under current law, this cost growth would mean dramatically rising pressures on 

the general budget from today through the mid-2030s. By 2020, annual program 

deficits would be larger, relatively speaking, than in the program’s so-called crisis 

years of 1977 and 1982, when urgent reforms were necessitated. And even if these 

rising costs were successfully shouldered within the general budget, Social Security 

benefits would still be suddenly cut by 22% in 2037 due to insolvency in the absence 

of a legislative correction. 

WHY SOCIAL SECURITY COSTS GROW

The rapid program cost growth projected through the 2030s is predominantly a 

function of three factors: 

1) The aging of the population; 

2) Pay-as-you-go financing; 

3) The current Social Security benefit formula. 

Social Security costs will grow, first, because there will be many more beneficiaries to support. In 2008, the total number of Social Security beneficiaries topped 

50 million for the first time. There were 3.2 taxpaying workers to support each beneficiary, the same ratio that existed in 1975. But these numbers are changing dramatically as the Baby Boomers leave the ranks of workers to join the ranks of retirees. The 2010 Trustees’ report projected that there will be 90 million beneficiaries 

by 2036, and only 2.1 taxpaying workers to support each beneficiary. 

The second reason that costs rise is that the program is financed on a pay-as-yougo basis. Benefits are paid from tax contributions made by current workers, rendering program finances very sensitive to changes in the worker-collector ratio. If, 

hypothetically, Social Security had been constructed as a savings program—in which 

each generation always constrained its own consumption and put aside savings sufficient to fund the entirety of their own future benefits—its finances would be less 

susceptible to demographic shifts. Instead, Social Security has been operated on a 

pay-as-you-go basis in the sense that workers’ tax contributions are not saved. Most 

of these contributions finance current benefit payments, while any surplus payments finance ongoing federal government consumption. The consequence is that 

the entire rising cost of paying benefits shown on Figure 1 must be met by future 

contributing taxpayers. 
16 

The third reason that costs rise is rooted in program amendments in the 1970s. 

It was then that a benefit formula was put in place that pegs the growth of initial 

benefit payments to increases in the national Average Wage Index (AWI). The rationale behind this benefit formula was to maintain constant ‘‘replacement rates’’— 

i.e., benefits as a percentage of pre-retirement wages. Because wages tend to grow 

faster than prices over time, this formula results in the payment of higher benefits, 

relative to inflation, to younger generations of retirees. 

It is the combination of these three factors that causes Social Security costs to 

grow faster than the underlying tax base. An equation may be helpful in understanding this phenomenon. Under a financing method like that in Social Security, 

the following equation governs: 

(Per-capita benefits as a % of worker wages) 

————————————————————— = (Worker tax burden, as a % of wages) (Ratio of workers to beneficiaries) 

Accordingly, if the ratio of workers to beneficiaries declines, then tax rates must 

rise to fund benefits that grow as rapidly as wages. Alternatively, to avoid a tax 

increase as the population ages, per-capita benefits must grow more slowly than 

wages. It turns out that even with our demographics we can still afford a rate of 

per-capita benefit growth that is somewhat faster than price inflation, but not as 

fast as wage growth, without raising taxes. This benefit growth in excess of inflation 
17 

6See any of a number of Social Security proposals scored by the Office of the Social Security 

Actuary, for example the proposal of Senator Bennett, http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/solvency/ 

RBennett—20090212.pdf, in which the cost rate rises to 15.5% by 2030. The Bennett proposal 

is typical of Social Security plans that do not raise taxes, in that there still would be a substantial period of time during which general revenues are required to redeem Trust Fund bonds and 

to pay the retirement benefits of the large Baby Boom generation. To the extent that a Social 

Security proposal relies on additional tax revenues, these total cost rates would tend to rise even 

more rapidly through the 2030s at least. 

will no longer be affordable within stable tax rates, however, after several more 

years of legislative delay. 

THE COSTS OF DELAY FOR PROGRAM PARTICIPANTS

It has become something of a cliche for analysts of program finances in my position to warn decision-makers in your position of the costs of delay in addressing Social Security. It is very important, however, to recognize that this is not merely an 

abstract concern; significant further delay in repairing program finances will hurt 

real people. 

Let us start first with a positive illustration. Were a solution enacted today, we 

could repair Social Security’s projected shortfall while facing relatively benign 

choices. We would be able to honor current benefit obligations to people now in retirement and on the verge of retirement. We could ensure that future retirees receive benefits that are at least as high as today’s retirees receive, relative to inflation, and we could do so without a tax increase. This would still require changes 

to the current benefit formula and might not be everyone’s preferred solution. Some 

others might argue to raise taxes even under a solution enacted today, so as to fund 

the full rate of benefit growth projected under the current formula, or something 

closer to it. The point remains, however, that today our choices are comparatively 

benign. If we act today, we needn’t necessarily raise taxes on workers, nor must we 

compel future retirees to accept a standard of living in retirement that is lower than 

for today’s retirees. 

Now let us examine the opposite extreme; the worst-case scenario. Suppose that 

we do nothing at all. Each year from now until the 2030s, burdens on taxpayers 

would grow. By the mid-2020s, in addition to the 12.4% Social Security payroll tax, 

taxpaying workers would need to finance another $200 billion a year in Trust Fund 

bond redemptions just to keep full benefits flowing. By the 2030s, these additional 

annual obligations would be over $300 billion. As previously mentioned, the total 

cost of paying benefits would absorb fully one out of every six taxable dollars earned 

by workers by the 2030s. And even after that, the program would still become insolvent in 2037, causing a sudden 22% reduction in benefit payments. 

Dire though this scenario is, it actually understates the costs of delay as they 

would be felt in a practical sense. Further costs of delay arise because we have a 

fairly firm bipartisan consensus that we should not cut benefits for people who are 

already receiving them. The 22% benefit reduction just referred to assumes we 

would be willing to allow benefits for a 95-year-old widow in 2037—someone who 

is already collecting benefits today in 2011—to be suddenly and dramatically cut. 

This is very unlikely. In practice, any changes we make to our cost obligations will 

likely only prospectively affect future retirees, not those already retired. 

And so we need to run this thought experiment again, and to ask how deep the 

cuts would have to be in 2037 if we limited them to new retirees. When we do that, 

it turns out that in 2037 we still wouldn’t be in balance even if we cut off 100% 

of benefit payments to that year’s new retiree class. This outcome also appears implausible. And so one must start working through the problem backwards from 2037 

and ask, ‘‘How soon would any changes have to begin so that they don’t result in 

disruptive cuts for those already retired, and do not produce an unprecedented increase in Social Security tax burdens?’’ 

The answer is: quite soon. By 2015, we’ll have over 60 million beneficiaries on the 

rolls. Any changes we legislate today are unlikely to affect their benefits. If we wait 

to legislate until 2015, and thus haven’t changed anything about the benefits for 

people retiring before 2020, we’ll have 70 million on the rolls then whose benefits 

can only be paid by imposing rising tax burdens. 

Even if we acted immediately today, and enacted one of the Social Security plans 

that most aggressively contains the rate of benefit growth without raising payroll 

taxes, our children will still face a cost rate of more than 15% of their wages by 

the 2030s for this one federal program alone.6 Thus, if we care about whether our 

children face qualitatively higher tax burdens than our own, we need to act very 

soon. 
18 

In sum, the fact that Social Security is projected to be solvent until 2037 matters 

little to the question of when we should act. Our window of opportunity for a reasonably equitable solution is closing much faster. 

There is another very important practical reason why delay is potentially very 

costly, even threatening to Social Security. It is very challenging to bring opposing 

perspectives together around a common plan of action for Social Security under any 

circumstances. Consider the difficulty we already have in bridging our differences 

about Social Security; it only gets harder to do this as the inevitable tax increases 

and benefit adjustments for affected generations grow larger. 

In 1983, the program came within mere months of insolvency and an interruption 

of vital checks to beneficiaries. That was with both parties agreeing on the immediacy of the problem, and on the dire consequences of failure. 

For additional perspective, consider that though in the early 1980s there was a 

threat of immediate insolvency, in other respects the situation was not nearly as 

severe as what we now face. Our situation is deteriorating far more quickly. Back 

in the early 1980s, the worker-beneficiary ratio was still relatively stable for decades to come and the long-term costs of delay weren’t nearly as great as they are 

now. For example, though the 1982 Trustees’ report warned of near-term insolvency, 

it actually projected program surpluses in the 1990s and beyond, in contrast with 

our current projections of permanently growing long-term deficits. See Figure 4 

below. 

Many people do not realize, due to a change in the Trustees’ accounting methods 

adopted in 1988, that the long-term Social Security shortfall we now face is much 

larger than the one corrected in 1983—more than 50% larger if measured by the 

same methods in use then. Given the demonstrated difficulty of enacting even the 

1983 reforms on the brink of program insolvency, we should be very circumspect 

about assuming that a disruptive outcome for Social Security beneficiaries can be 

avoided after too many more years of inaction. 

SOME COMMON OBJECTIONS TO SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM

Before I close, Mr. Chairman, I would like to address some of the objections that 

are often raised against taking action to repair Social Security finances. 

One objection that received attention for some time was the argument that the 

Trustees’ Social Security projections were overly conservative; that we shouldn’t implement unnecessarily severe measures when much of the problem was likely to go 

away by itself under more optimistic projections. With Social Security finances in 

much worse shape today than any of the Trustees, CBO, OMB or GAO had previously projected, this is now asserted much less frequently than was recently the 

case. But it was actually never true. The Trustees’ projection history since 1983 is 

actually one of generally consistent accuracy, and their errors have tended to be 

slightly more on the fiscally optimistic side of the line than on the pessimistic side 

of the line. For their 2010 report, the Trustees assumed a slight acceleration in 

long-term real wage growth rates relative to averages over the last several business 
19 

7See Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2011 to 2021, p. 58. Social Security costs are projected to grow from $727 B in 2011 to $1.267 T in 2021, 

an annual increase of $540 B. Medicare costs are projected to grow from $572 B in 2011 to 

$1.021 T in 2021, an annual increase of $449 B. 

cycles. And finally, there was not a single solvency scenario within the entire 95% 

confidence band of the Trustees’ latest probabilistic analysis in which the program 

would not become insolvent. 

Today, some have asserted that Social Security reform should not be pursued because the program (it is said) is not a significant contributor to the larger federal 

deficit. I would respectfully submit that this is not the best way to approach the 

Social Security problem. First, the factual point: the Social Security imbalance is indeed the largest contributor to long-term deficits out of all spending programs other 

than Medicare or Medicaid. Over the next ten years, according to CBO’s latest projections, not only will Social Security involve more expenditures than any other single federal program, but its aggregate cost growth will exceed that of either Medicare or Medicaid.7

Even if Social Security weren’t a significant contributor to long-term deficits, this 

would not render corrective action unimportant: whether the rest of the budget is 

in surplus or in deficit, Social Security—if it is to remain self-financing—must be 

brought into balance. These larger budget issues are relevant only because they establish that it will be impractical over the long term to bail out Social Security with 

general government revenues. This reality only highlights rather than diminishes 

the importance of Social Security being able to stand on its own. The earlier that 

we repair Social Security’s imbalance, the better off Social Security participants will 

be, and the stronger the program will be. 

You as legislators must make the tactical judgments as to the best process for restoring Social Security to balance. If separating Social Security from the larger 

budget discussion enables us to enact Social Security repairs more rapidly, this 

would be a strong argument for separation. If, however, such separation merely facilitates inaction and permits Social Security’s imbalance to grow worse, this would 

be a very strong argument against it. 

Finally, it is sometimes said that we should not take action to resolve the Social 

Security imbalance because doing so would cause harm to people on Social Security. 

I would respectfully submit that this is not true. Right now, there is a substantial 

imbalance between what the program is promising beneficiaries and the resources 

it will have available to pay benefits. One way or the other, that imbalance has to 

be resolved; the government cannot send out the checks without in some way producing the revenue to do so. Thus, a failure to act is simply a failure to disclose 

to the affected parties how this imbalance will ultimately be resolved. It basically 

conceals from taxpaying workers and/or beneficiaries costs that will be imposed 

upon them but which they are not now being told about. 

Moreover, as we have discussed, the longer that we continue with the current imbalance on the books, the closer we get to the day where beneficiaries need to worry 

not only about cuts in the future growth of benefits—but about actual cuts even relative to previous benefit levels. Thus, it is inaction, rather than prudent and prompt 

reforms, that poses the greatest danger to Social Security beneficiaries. 

CONCLUSION

My conclusion is best summarized by some sentences from an article I was recently privileged to co-author with Robert Greenstein of the Center on Budget and 

Policy Priorities. ‘‘Social Security faces a significant shortfall, which policy makers 

would be better off addressing sooner rather than later. Reasonable and well-intentioned people will have differences over the best way to resolve the Social Security 

shortfall. We share a common interest, however, in taking action to do so at the earliest possible time.’’ 

Chairman RYAN. Thank you. I am sorry to end you there. A vote 

has hit, we have got 13 minutes left in the vote. Let’s get through 

these two gentlemen, and if you could stick to your five minutes 

that would be great. Then we will recess and all come back after 

two votes. Mr. Capretta. 

STATEMENT OF JAMES C. CAPRETTA 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Van Hollen, for 

holding this hearing. It is a very important topic. The budget prob-
20 

lems we are experiencing today are directly related to the fact that 

health costs have risen dramatically over the past four decades. In 

some sense, we are already living in the long run cost problem. 

In 1975, the federal government spent 1.3 percent of GDP on 

Medicare and Medicaid. In 2010, spending on just those two programs had risen to 5.5 percent of GDP. That is more than 400 percent growth. Why are health care costs rising so rapidly? 

The prevailing view has been that the federal government health 

programs experience rapidly rising costs because they are victims 

of the runaway cost train that is pulling the entire system down 

the tracks at too rapid a rate. But this point of view ignores the 

crucial role of existing governmental policy. At present, the vast 

majority of Americans get their health insurance through one of 

three sources, Medicare, Medicaid for the low income, and employers for the working-age population and their families. In each instance, the federal treasury is underwriting rapid costs escalation, 

because there is no limit to what Uncle Sam will pay as the premiums rise. 

In Medicare, most beneficiaries are in fee-for-service with no cost 

sharing at the point of service, due to supplemental insurance. The 

result of this arrangement is hardly surprising. The volume of services paid for by Medicare has been on a steady and steep upward 

trajectory for decades. The real price Medicare paid for physician 

fees dropped between 1997 and 2005 by five percent. That is, the 

real price paid for physician services went down, but volume went 

up by more than enough that total spending on physician services 

rose by 35 percent in real terms. 

Medicaid fuels cost growth because it is financed with a flawed 

statement of federal-state matching payments. In this arrangement, if a governor of a state wants to cut their state’s Medicaid 

costs, they have to cut the program by $2.32 to save $1. Not surprisingly, most state politicians do not find this to be attractive. 

The federal tax treatment of employer-sponsored coverage provides a similar incentive for higher costs. Rather than economizing, 

its unlimited tax break for health insurance premiums means that 

health benefits are preferred to cash wages in many instances. 

The key question is: what process is most likely to succeed in 

bringing about continual and rapid improvement in the productivity and quality of patient care? That is what is needed to slow 

the pace of rising costs. One view is that the government can help 

engineer more cost-effective health care delivery. That is the 

thought that animated the accountable care organizations in the 

new health care law, the Medicare pilot projects, the $10 billion 

Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. 

But that has been tried, even though not in such a large way, 

but it has been tried many times in the Medicare program, in the 

past. And it has failed. There is an alternative, and it is a functioning marketplace with cost-conscious consumers. In 2003, Congress built such a marketplace for the new prescription drug benefit. There is a competitive structure with a defined contribution 

fixed independently of the plan chosen by the beneficiaries. At the 

time of enactment, there were many pronouncements that it would 

never work, that no plans would participate, that it would be too 

complex, that the beneficiaries would prefer a one size fits all pro-
21 

gram run by the government, and the government could negotiate 

a better deal on its own. All of those assumptions were proven 

wrong. The program has come in 40 percent below expectations, in 

terms of costs. 

We need to do something similar in Medicare, in the rest of 

Medicare, on a prospective basis. As Chuck mentioned, these reforms in Medicare can be the same as they are in Social Security. 

They do not have to affect existing beneficiaries, or even those who 

are about to enter the program. On a prospective basis, we need 

to model the rest of Medicare, something along the lines of what 

we did in the prescription drug program. 

In Medicaid, a similar approach would allow for more seamless 

coverage between those who are on the Medicaid program and 

those who earn a little bit more and move into the working-age private insurance system. As it stands today, when someone leaves 

Medicaid, they often have a spell of un-insurance because there is 

no coordination between the public program and private coverage. 

In the employer setting, if we move to a tax credit approach that 

is universal for all households, it would be, in a sense, a universal 

coverage program. Because if someone did not take up this tax 

credit and use it to buy insurance, they would forgo the entire 

amount of this new subsidy. So it is, in this sense, a universal coverage program that would allow everybody in America to have a 

good health insurance plan. 

Finally, I would just note that some have said that this shifts all 

the costs on the beneficiaries. That is only true if there is no productivity change from this kind of a shift. But if you assume, as 

I do, that moving toward this kind of an approach actually changes 

the dynamic of the health system toward higher productivity, higher quality, more patient-focused system, then we can actually get 

a better system that is fiscally sound, as well as better for the patients. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Capretta follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JAMES C. CAPRETTA, FELLOW, 

ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Van Hollen, and members of the Committee, thank you for 

the opportunity to participate in this very important hearing on ‘‘Fulfilling the Mission of Health and Retirement Security.’’ 

In the time available, I would like to focus my comments on the health care component of today’s hearing. 

RISING FEDERAL HEALTH ENTITLEMENT OBLIGATIONS

A primary objective of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) 

was to increase the health security of the American people. But health security, no 

matter how well intentioned, will be fleeting if the programs upon which that security depends are unaffordable for taxpayers. 

Unfortunately, that is exactly the situation in which we find ourselves today. Federal health entitlement spending has been growing rapidly for many years, and is 

expected to continue doing so even after enactment of the PPACA. Indeed, it is 

sometimes said that at some distant point in the future, the long-term rise in federal health care costs will catch up with us. But the truth is that rising federal 

health entitlement spending has already caught up with us. The budget problems 

we are experiencing today are directly related to the fact that health costs have 

risen dramatically over the past four decades. In 1975, the federal government spent 

1.3 percent of GDP on Medicare and Medicaid. In 2010, spending on just those two 

program had risen to 5.5 percent of GDP. That’s more than 400 percent growth. 
22 

And the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) most recent projections show health 

entitlement spending is poised to rise even more rapidly over the next decade than 

it has in the past. As shown in Chart 1, CBO expects total health entitlement 

spending to rise from $810 billion in 2010 to $1,763 billion in 2021. By 2021, health 

entitlement spending will make up an astonishing 36 percent of all non-interest federal outlays. So more than one in three dollars that the government spends on programs and agency budgets will go to meeting health entitlement obligations. 

During the debate over the health care law, it was suggested that a goal of reform 

was to begin to slow the pace of rising federal health entitlement costs. But the 

PPACA has almost certainly compounded the problem, not solved it. As shown in 

Chart 2, in a long-term forecast issued last June, CBO estimated what health entitlement spending would be in the coming decades if the health law had not been 

enacted at all and if it were implemented in full (called the ‘‘extended baseline’’). 

With those assumptions, the lines do in fact cross at some point around 2027 or so— 

meaning the PPACA will have brought health entitlement obligations below the 

level they otherwise would be. But the ‘‘extended baseline’’ scenario assumes the 

new law’s deep payment reductions in the Medicare program can be sustained on 

a permanent basis. As this committee heard at a hearing in January, the chief actuary of the Medicare program believes that to be a very unlikely scenario. Accordingly, CBO has also done a projection of what federal health entitlement obligations 

will be in future years under the PPACA if the Medicare cuts are moderated even 

slightly. With that assumption, the PPACA does not reduce federal health entitlement obligations but increases them, by about 1 percent of GDP by 2035. 
23 

1 ‘‘The Aggregate Effects of Health Insurance: Evidence from the Introduction of Medicare,’’ 

Amy Finkelstein, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, April 2006 (http://econ-www.mit.edu/ 

files/788). 

THE ROLE OF EXISTING GOVERNMENT POLICY

Why are health care costs rising so rapidly? The prevailing view has been that 

the federal government’s health programs experience rapidly rising costs because 

they are victims of the runaway cost train that is pulling the entire system down 

the tracks at too fast a rate. According to this way of thinking, the only way to slow 

the government’s costs is to slow the whole train. That’s the point of view that informed much of the writing of the new health care law. 

But this thinking misses a crucial point. Yes, one aspect of cost escalation is an 

exogenous factor. Rising wealth and medical discovery are fueling the demand for 

more and better treatments. That should not be resisted in any event. But there 

is widespread agreement that costs are also high and rising because of waste and 

inefficiency—and here the problem is not some force outside of government’s control 

but existing governmental policy. 

At present, the vast majority of Americans get their health insurance through one 

of three sources: Medicare, for the elderly and disabled; Medicaid, for low-income 

households; and employers for the working-age population and their families. In 

each of these instances, the federal Treasury is underwriting rapid cost escalation 

because there is no limit to what Uncle Sam will pay. 

In an important 2006 study, Amy Finkelstein, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, estimated that about half of the real-cost increase in health care spending in the United States from 1950 to 1990 can be attributed to the spread of federally-subsidized and expansive third-party insurance 

through the government and employers.1

Medicare’s important influence on how health care services are delivered is often 

overlooked or understated. Medicare is the largest purchaser of services in most 

markets today. Four out of five enrollees are in the traditional program, which is 

fee-for-service insurance. That means Medicare pays a pre-set rate to any provider 

for any service rendered on behalf of a program enrollee, with essentially no questions asked. Nearly all Medicare beneficiaries also have supplemental insurance, 

from their former employers or purchased in the Medigap market. With this additional coverage, they pay no charges at the point of service because the combined 

insurance pays 100 percent of the cost. This kind of first-dollar coverage provides 

a powerful incentive for additional use. Whole segments of the U.S. medical industry 

have been built around the incentives embedded in these arrangements. 

Congress and the program’s administrators have, without interruption, tried to 

hold down Medicare’s costs by paying less for each service provided. Those providing 

services to Medicare patients have responded by providing more services, and more 
24 

2 ‘‘Factors Underlying the Growth in Medicare’s Spending for Physicians’ Services,’’ Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Background Paper, June 2007 (http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/81xx/ 

doc8193/06-06-MedicareSpending.pdf). 

intensive treatment, over time for the same conditions that patients present to 

them. In most cases, there is no reason for them not to provide higher-volume care. 

The patients generally do not pay any more when more services are rendered. And 

the bill is just passed on to the Medicare program—and federal taxpayers. 

The result of this dynamic is hardly surprising. The volume of services paid for 

by Medicare has been on a steady and steep upward trajectory for decades. As 

shown in Chart 3, according to CBO, the real price Medicare paid for physician fees 

dropped between 1997 and 2005 by nearly 5 percent, but total spending for physician services rose 35 percent because of rising use and more intensive treatment per 

condition.2

Medicaid fuels cost growth because it is financed with a flawed system of federalstate matching payments—with no limit on the amount that can be drawn from the 

U.S. Treasury each year. For every dollar of Medicaid costs, the federal government 

pays, on average, 57 percent and the states pick up the rest. In this arrangement, 

if a governor or state agency wants to cut their state’s Medicaid costs, they have 

to cut the program by $2.30 to save $1.00 because the other $1.30 belongs to the 

federal government. Not surprisingly, most state politicians do not find this to be 

a particularly appealing option. So, instead, they spend most of their energy devising ways to ‘‘maximize’’ how much they get from the federal government for Medicaid services—while looking for creative ways to contribute the required state portion of the funding without really doing so. 

The federal tax treatment of employer-sponsored coverage provides a similar incentive for higher costs rather than economizing. Today, employer-paid health insurance premiums do not count as taxable compensation for workers. No matter how 

expensive the health insurance premium, if the employer is paying, it is tax-free to 

the worker. Employees thus have a strong incentive to take more and more of their 

compensation in the form of health coverage instead of cash wages because the 

health coverage is not taxable. For every dollar spent on health coverage, a worker 

receives a full dollar of coverage; whereas with every dollar received in other forms 

of compensation, a portion has to go to the government. 

When you put it all together—Medicare’s incentives for rising volume, unlimited 

federal funding for state-run Medicaid plans, and a tax subsidy for employer plans 

that grows with the expense of the plan—it is not surprising that health care costs 

are rising rapidly in the United States. The vast majority of Americans are in insurance arrangements where a large portion of every extra dollar spent on premiums 

or services is paid for by taxpayers, not them. 
25 

3 ‘‘Estimated Financial Effects of the ‘Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,’ as Amended,’’ Richard S. Foster, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, April 

22, 2010 (https://www.cms.gov/ActuarialStudies/Downloads/PPACA—2010-04-22.pdf). 

THE KEY QUESTION

So cost escalation is at the center of our fiscal problems, and it is making health 

care unaffordable for too many people. The key question for health reform is, what 

can be done about it. Put more precisely, the key question health reformers must 

answer is this: what process is most likely to succeed in bringing about continual 

and rapid improvement in the productivity and quality of patient care? Because the 

only way to slow the pace of rising costs without comprising the quality of American 

medicine is by making the health sector ever more productive. More health bang 

for the buck, if you will. 

One view holds that the federal government can ‘‘engineer’’ more cost-effective 

health care delivery. That’s the theory behind the new law’s Accountable Care Organizations, other Medicare pilot projects, the comparative effectiveness research funding, and the new $10 billion Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. 

But Medicare’s administrators have been trying for years to change the dynamic 

in the traditional fee-for-service program and have failed. The problem is that the 

only way to build a high-quality, low-cost network is to exclude those who are lowvalue and high-cost. And that’s something Medicare has never been able to do. It’s 

been much easier, and more tempting, to simply impose across-the-board payment 

reductions for all providers of services, without picking winners and losers among 

physicians and hospitals. And so such arbitrary cost-cutting has become the default 

mechanism for hitting budget targets of various kinds over the years. 

And, despite all the talk of ‘‘delivery system reform,’’ that is exactly what was 

done in the PPACA too. Among other things, Congress enacted a permanent ‘‘productivity improvement factor,’’ which will reduce the inflation increases applied to 

multiple Medicare payment systems. These reductions will reduce the normal update for the costs of medical practice by about half a percentage point every year 

in perpetuity for every provider of these services, including hospitals, without regard 

to how well or badly they treat patients. The compounding effect of such reductions 

will produce, on paper, enormous savings. But these cuts almost certainly will not 

be sustained as they will push average Medicare payment rates for services below 

those of Medicaid by 2019, according to the chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. If that were actually to occur, some 15 percent of Medicare’s hospitals would stop seeing Medicare patients to avoid massive financial 

losses.3

TRANSFORMING HEALTH CARE DELIVERY WITH COST-CONSCIOUS CONSUMER CHOICE

There is an alternative to centralized cost-control efforts. It’s a functioning marketplace with cost-conscious consumers. 

In 2003, Congress built such a marketplace, for the new prescription-drug benefit 

in Medicare. 

Two features of the program’s design were important to its success. First, there 

was no incumbent government-run option to distort the marketplace with price controls and cost shifting. All private plans were on a level playing field. They competed with each other based on their ability to get discounts from manufacturers 

for an array of prescription offerings that are in demand among beneficiaries and 

their physicians. 

Second, the government’s contribution to the cost of drug coverage is fixed and 

is the same regardless of the specific plan a beneficiary selects. The contribution is 

calculated based on the enrollment-weighted average of bids by participating plans 

in a market area. Beneficiaries selecting more expensive plans than the average bid 

must pay the additional premium out of their own pockets. Those selecting less expensive plans pay a lower premium. With the incentives aligned properly, participating plans know in advance that the only way to win market share is by offering 

an attractive product at a competitive price because it is the beneficiaries to whom 

they must ultimately appeal. 

This competitive structure, with a defined contribution fixed independently of the 

plan chosen by the beneficiary, has worked to keep cost growth much below other 

parts of Medicare and below expectations. At the time of enactment, there were 

many pronouncements that using competition, private plans, and a defined government contribution would never work because insurers would not participate, beneficiaries would be incapable of making choices, and private insurers would not be 

able to negotiate deeper discounts than the government could impose by fiat. All of 

those assumptions were proven wrong. What actually happened is that robust com-
26 

petition took place, scores of insurers entered the program with aggressive cost cutting and low premiums, costs were driven down, and federal spending has come in 

40 percent below expectations. 

Similar changes—what might be called a defined contribution approach to reform—must be implemented in the non-drug portion of Medicare, as well as in Medicaid (excluding the disabled and elderly) and employer-provided health care. 

In Medicare, that would mean using a competitive bidding system—including bids 

from the traditional fee-for-service (FFS) program—to determine the government’s 

contribution in a region. Beneficiaries could choose to enroll in any qualified plan, 

including FFS. In some regions, FFS might be less expensive than the competing 

private plans. But in some places, it almost certainly would not be, and beneficiary 

premiums would reflect the cost difference. This kind of reform could be implemented on a prospective basis so that those already on the program or nearly so 

would remain in the program as currently structured. 

In Medicaid, moving toward fixed federal contributions for the acute-care portion 

of the program would allow for much greater integration between Medicaid and the 

insurance market available to most workers. Today, when a Medicaid recipient goes 

back to work, he often loses public insurance but doesn’t get employer coverage. 

Converting the entitlement into something that can be used in a variety of insurance settings should facilitate portability and more continuous coverage. 

For employers, the key is to convert today’s tax preference for employer-paid premiums into a fixed, refundable tax credit that is available to all households (headed 

by someone under the age of 65), regardless of whether they work or pay taxes. This 

would provide ‘‘universal coverage’’ of insurance to the entire U.S. population. Any 

household that didn’t buy coverage would lose the entire value of the credit. The 

number choosing to do so would likely be very small. 

Moving toward a defined-contribution approach to reform would allow for much 

greater federal budgetary control, which is of course a primary objective and tremendously important for the nation’s economy and long-term prosperity. But this 

isn’t just a fiscal reform. It’s a crucial step toward better health care too because 

it would put consumers and patients in the driver’s seat, not the government. With 

consumer making choices about the kind of coverage they want as well as the type 

of ‘‘delivery system’’ through which they get care, the health system would orient 

itself to delivering the kind of care patients want and expect. 

Critics argue that this improved fiscal outlook that would flow from moving toward defined contribution health care would come at the expense of the beneficiaries, who would bear the entire risk of costs continuing to rise faster than the 

government’s newly fixed contribution. 

But that would only be the case if building a functioning marketplace had no discernible impact on the productivity of the health sector. It is far more likely that 

converting millions of passive insurance enrollees into cost conscious consumers will 

have a transformative effect on health care delivery, and for the better. There would 

be tremendous competitive pressure on those delivering services to do more with 

less, and find better ways of giving patients what they truly need. Any health sector 

player that did not step up and improve its productivity would risk losing substantial market share among seniors, working people, and those on Medicaid. In other 

areas of our economy that have gone through a consumer revolution, the transformation of the industry has been stunning. 

CONCLUSION

There is obviously much more that needs to be done to ensure a stable and accessible health care system for future generations. Support will need to be limited for 

those with means so that more can be done for those who need extra help. Special 

assistance will be necessary to ensure those with pre-existing conditions can secure 

affordable coverage. And the government will need to do its part, to ensure transparency in prices and quality, and to ensure the rules of the marketplace prevent 

excessive risk segmentation and inferior care for those with less resources. 

But with effective government oversight, cost-conscious consumers have the potential to transform American health care, making it much more productive and of high 

quality, which is what we desperately need. With such a reform, the system will 

become more patient-focused, more efficient, and more innovative. The result will 

be less fiscal stress, a healthier population, and a health care sector that delivers 

the kind of value the public deserves. 

Chairman RYAN. Thank you. Mr. Van de Water. 
27 

STATEMENT OF PAUL N. VAN DE WATER 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Van Hollen, and members of the committee, I appreciate the opportunity to be here this 

morning. As you, Mr. Chairman, and my colleagues have already 

stated, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are bulwarks in 

protecting the health and retirement security of America’s seniors 

and persons with disabilities. Nonetheless, increasingly, we are 

seeing proposals to restructure these programs in ways that would 

undermine their ability to protect against the risks of income loss 

and high health care costs. 

Some propose making large cuts in scheduled Social Security 

benefits, or partially privatizing the program. Others suggest phasing out traditional Medicare and replacing it with vouchers to purchase private insurance. Still others would end the state-federal 

partnership in Medicaid, and substitute a fixed federal block grant. 

In my view, these proposals all share serious deficiencies. 

Few seniors are living on Easy Street, and most have little capacity to bear additional economic risk. Social Security benefits are 

modest. The average Social Security benefit is only $1,175 a month, 

or about $14,000 a year. That is not quite 30 percent above the 

poverty line. Some 95 percent of beneficiaries receive benefits of 

less than $2,000. Moreover, most beneficiaries have little significant income from other sources. 

Dependence on Social Security rises with advancing age. As 

fewer people work, out of pocket health care costs rise, and other 

income sources are depleted. Social Security will be even more critical for today’s younger workers when they retire, since few of them 

will be covered by employer-sponsored and fine benefit pension 

plans. 

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are also highly cost-effective. Their administrative costs are low, and the new universal 

coverage of Social Security and Medicare holds down benefit costs 

by protecting against adverse selection in purchasing annuities and 

health coverage. 

Mr. Chairman, in your opening remarks, you talked about how 

changes are needed. And with that I agree. Social Security’s solvency should be strengthened, and further efforts are needed to 

slow the growth of health care costs. But where I disagree with 

some of my colleagues, and perhaps with you, is on the solutions. 

Social Security can be made solvent through modest changes, and 

it should. And second, an important thing to do, as Dr. Rivlin has 

also said, is to move forward effectively to implement the Affordable Care Act and the cost containment measures that have already been enacted. 

In my view, the fundamental structures of these programs are 

sound, and they can be improved, and our country’s fiscal situation 

strengthened, by making incremental changes, and without fundamentally changing the nature of what we have today. Thank you 

very much. 

[The prepared statement of Dr. Van de Water follows:] 
28 

1Kathy A. Ruffing and Paul N. Van de Water, Social Security Benefits Are Modest, Center 

on Budget and Policy Priorities, January 11, 2011. 2 Congressional Budget Office, Designing a Premium Support System for Medicare, December 

2006, p. 12. 3 Adverse selection occurs when people with poorer-than-average health are more likely to 

purchase health insurance coverage, or when people with longer-than-average life expectancy 

are more likely to purchase annuities. 4Leighton Ku and Matthew Broaddus, ‘‘Public and Private Insurance: Stacking Up the Costs,’’ 

Health Affairs (web exclusive), June 24, 2008. 5 John Holahan, Lisa Clemans-Cope, Emily Lawton, and David Rousseau, Medicaid Spending 

Growth over the Last Decade and the Great Recession, 2000-2009, Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, February 2011. 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF PAUL N. VAN DE WATER, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER ON BUDGET AND POLICY PRIORITIES

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Van Hollen, and members of the committee, I appreciate the 

invitation to appear before you today to discuss health and retirement security. 

Our landmark public programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—are 

bulwarks in defending the well-being of America’s seniors and people with disabilities. Social Security provides a wage-indexed, inflation-protected benefit that is the 

foundation of retirement security. Thanks to Medicare, seniors are the one part of 

the population in which health insurance coverage is almost universal. Medicaid 

fills the gaps in Medicare protection for those with very low incomes and is the nation’s primary payer for long-term care services and supports. 

Despite the vital roles they play, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are 

under attack. Increasingly, we see proposals to restructure them in ways that would 

undermine their ability to protect against the risks of income loss and high health 

care costs. Some propose making large cuts in scheduled Social Security benefits or 

diverting a portion of payroll tax contributions into private accounts. Others suggest 

phasing out traditional Medicare and replacing it with vouchers to purchase private 

insurance. Still others would end the shared federal-state fiscal responsibility in 

Medicaid and substitute a fixed federal block grant. Some recommend all of the 

above. 

These proposals have some key aspects in common and also share some serious 

deficiencies. Time does not allow a thorough analysis of each one, but let me offer 

a few comments. 

Few seniors are living on Easy Street, and most have little capacity to bear additional economic risks. Social Security benefits are modest.1 The average Social Security benefit is only about $1,175 a month, or $14,100 a year. That’s less than 30 

percent above the poverty line. Some 95 percent of retired workers—and even larger 

percentages of disabled workers and aged widows—receive monthly benefits of less 

than $2,000. Moreover, most beneficiaries have little significant income from other 

sources. In 2008, the typical (or median) elderly beneficiary had a total household 

income of only about $20,000 a year, most of it from Social Security. Dependence 

on Social Security rises with advancing age, as fewer people work, out-of-pocket 

health care costs rise, and other income sources are depleted. Social Security will 

be even more critical for today’s younger workers, since few of them will be covered 

by employer-sponsored defined-benefit pension plans. 

Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are also highly cost-effective, and privatization—in whole or in part—is likely to increase costs, not reduce them. Social Security’s administrative expenses amount to only 1 percent of benefit payments. In 

Medicare, administrative expenses are roughly 2 percent for traditional Medicare 

and 11 percent for Medicare Advantage plans.2 The near-universal coverage of Social Security and Medicare holds down benefit costs by protecting against adverse 

selection in purchasing annuities and health coverage.3 The average cost of health 

coverage for a Medicaid beneficiary is significantly lower than under private insurance (after adjusting for differences in health status), despite Medicaid’s more comprehensive benefits and significantly lower cost-sharing charges, because of Medicaid’s lower payment rates to providers and lower administrative costs.4

The main driver of the federal government’s long-term fiscal imbalance is the rising per-person cost of health care throughout the economy. Growth in federal health 

care costs is not driven by factors that are unique to public programs. To the contrary, for 30 years, per-beneficiary spending in Medicare and Medicaid has grown 

at rates nearly identical to those for the overall health care system. And during the 

past decade, Medicaid costs per beneficiary grew much more slowly than costs for 

employer-sponsored insurance and costs across the health care system as a whole.5

Medicare and Medicaid can and should take the lead in slowing the growth of costs, 

as they have done in the past, but they cannot get too far out in front. Attempting 
29 

to force big cuts in federal health spending without also restraining the growth of 

private health-care costs would simply shift costs to vulnerable elderly, disabled, 

and other beneficiaries (and limit their access to needed care) or to state taxpayers. 

Fortunately, the new health reform law takes important steps to slow the growth 

of health care costs. The Affordable Care Act contains almost every cost-containment provision that policy analysts have considered effective in reducing the growth 

of medical spending. These include: 

• Payment innovations, such as bundled payments and accountable care organizations, that will reward providers based on the value of their care, not the volume 

of their procedures; 

• An excise tax on high-cost insurance plans to make consumers more cost-sensitive and discourage excess utilization; 

• An Independent Payment Advisory Board that will develop and submit proposals to reduce cost growth and improve quality in both Medicare and the health 

care system as a whole; 

• A Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation that will test, evaluate, and foster rapid expansion of new ways to increase the value of care; 

• A Federal Coordinated Health Care Office that will test and evaluate new systems of care to integrate benefits more effectively and lower costs for dual eligibles 

(low-income Medicare beneficiaries who also receive Medicaid); 

• Measures to inform patients and payers about the quality of health care providers; 

• Additional tools and funding to fight health-care fraud; 

• More funding for comparative effectiveness research; and 

• Steps to promote wellness and prevention. 

Slowing the growth of health care costs is one of our nation’s most pressing economic challenges, and success will benefit employers, workers, and taxpayers. The 

effort will require an ongoing process of testing, experimentation, and rapid implementation of what is found to work. The health reform law begins that process. Congress should work to assure effective implementation of the Affordable Care Act, not 

to undermine the programs that form the bedrock of health and income security for 

seniors, persons with disabilities, and those with low incomes. 

Chairman RYAN. Thank you very much. We will recess until we 

come back, then we will start with questions. 

[Recess] 

Chairman RYAN. Dr. Rivlin, I want to give you a chance to expound upon your earlier comments with respect to your Medicare 

reforms; you have pioneered a lot of this. The Domenici-Rivlin plan, 

how it is different from the one that you and I authored, phaseins, the treatment of traditional fee-for-service, and why you made 

those decisions. 

Ms. RIVLIN. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I think the main difference is 

the phase-in. What you had in the roadmap, and we retained it in 

the version that we did together, was a very slow phase-in that 

would give the premium support only to new applicants, that is 

new eligibles, as they became eligible for Medicare in 2021. And 

they would not be allowed to stay or to go into the fee-for-service 

system, although everybody who was already in it would be staying 

in it. And that means that, even after 10 years, there would only 

be people under 75 in Premium Support. 

When we did the Domenici-Rivlin plan, we wanted to phase it in 

much sooner. And we thought that putting an option out there for 

everybody to be in Premium Support would put downward pressure 

on all health costs, because the private plans that were competing 

in the Premium Support system, we hope, would be providing service more efficiently. And if the people elected stayed in fee-for-service, and that went up faster, they could choose a more efficient 

plan. So that was the reasoning. 

Chairman RYAN. In your fee-for-service structure, which would 

occur alongside your premium support structure, you proposed bal-
30 

ance billing in the fee-for-service side? You are capping at certain 

rates, as you know. 

Ms. RIVLIN. Yes. I think we did not work out all the details of 

how it would work, but the concept was that if the cost, the average subsidy under the fee-for-service system, was rising faster than 

GDP plus one then people who stayed in it would have to pay an 

additional premium. I think we would have to put together parts 

A and B, and maybe D, but we already have a premium in B, so 

if you put those two together, you have a mechanism for charging 

a premium. 

Chairman RYAN. I see, so it is a defined contribution fee-for-service system, capped at the same growth rate that the premium support system is capped at. 

Ms. RIVLIN. That is the basic idea. 

Chairman RYAN. Yes, and if cost pressures occur higher then the 

beneficiary would bear the difference. And you would give them the 

ability to do that, meaning the ability of providers to get that. 

Ms. RIVLIN. Right. 

Chairman RYAN. Yes, okay. Mr. Blahous. I heard about this 

morning, I did not see MSNBC yesterday. But the Senate Majority 

Leader Harry Reid said that he would consider looking at Social 

Security quote, two decades from now, end quote. You touched on 

this in your testimony, but could you specifically describe the effect 

of waiting to reform Social Security on those who are in or near 

retirement? And what effect would that have on younger generations if we wait to address Social Security reform two decades from 

now? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. Sure. As I indicated in my written testimony and 

oral remarks, delay basically concentrates the effects of any adverse consequences on a shrinking number of people. And so any 

particular generation is going to be harder hit the longer you delay. 

Now, waiting all the way until the 2030s is basically a nightmare 

scenario from the standpoint of younger generations, because basically you are completely exempting the baby boom generation, 

which is a historically large generation, from making any contribution to the problem. The consequence is that, if you hold off until 

the 2030s, you are in a position where either you are going to have 

to reduce benefits fully by a quarter, roughly, or increase worker 

tax burdens by roughly one-third, or a combination of those two 

very severe outcomes. 

I think there is another very important point to make, which is 

that delay brings into fundamental question whether we can fix the 

system at all. Remember, in 1983, we came within months of not 

being able to send out the checks. It is hard to fix Social Security, 

simply because Republicans and Democrats disagree. And they disagree under the best of circumstances. Right now, the long term 

Social Security shortfall is already substantially bigger today than 

the one they fixed in 1983. If you measure it by the same methodology, the accounting methods have changed since then, so a lot of 

people do not realize this, but if you measure it the same way, we 

already have a bigger problem to solve. 

As this problem mounts and the gap that Republicans and Democrats have to close with each other gets bigger and bigger, we in-
31 

crease the risk that we may not be able to get an agreement on 

a solution, and have a chaotic and disruptive consequence. 

Chairman RYAN. The present value of the unfunded promise is 

$5.3 trillion, is that correct? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. Right. The last trustee’s report, it was $5.4 trillion 

in present value, and that assumes the trust fund is an asset. If 

you count the general revenue obligations to the trust fund, it is 

about $7.9 trillion in the last trustee’s report. 

Chairman RYAN. And if we delay, every year, how much, on average, does that increase by every year of delay? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. It is in the hundreds of billions. Having the liberty 

of some imprecision, my guess, the 75 year shortfall probably rises 

by about $400 billion a year in present value. That is a rough 

guess. The so-called infinite horizon’s shortfall would rise by more. 

But even this, I would submit, understates the true cost of delay. 

Because the true cost of delay is affected by the fact that we do not 

want to cut benefits for people once they hit the rolls. So you have 

a bigger share of that shortfall that is politically inviolate. 

Chairman RYAN. How confident are you on these projections? 

The reason I ask that is, we were told just a year ago, or two years 

ago, we were going to have Social Security surpluses through 2017. 

Then we had these economic problems, and now CBO is telling us 

we are going to have permanent cash deficits from now on. So, permanent cash deficits starting in 2011, when we thought we were 

not going to be in that situation for another six years. 

Given the deterioration of what we call baselines, the economy, 

what is the downside of all of this? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. Well, this is very important, because the trustees’ 

projections have long been subject to debate. Are their projections 

too optimistic, are they too pessimistic, what have you? So there is 

a range of uncertainty around the projections. I think the most important thing to understand, that even with a great diversity of 

possible outcomes, for fertility, for longevity, for economic growth, 

the system is going to become insolvent sometime within the next 

half century. 

And there is just as much risk that the problem will arrive much 

sooner, as there is reason to hope that it might be delayed by a few 

years. There is a 95 percent confidence band in a probabilistic analysis that the trustees perform each year. Last year there was not 

a single scenario in that 95 percent confidence band where the system did not become insolvent. So the chances of this problem not 

happening is almost negligible. 

Chairman RYAN. Mr. Capretta, you touched on this a little bit in 

your testimony. We spend more money on health care per person 

than any other industrialized country in the world, by about two 

and a half times, I think. So we spend a lot of money on health 

care, just through taxpayers. As you mentioned, between Medicare, 

Medicaid, the tax exclusion, that is something like $4.5 trillion over 

the next 10 years. And that is, I think, a low-ball estimate. That 

is just for Medicaid and the tax exclusion, I think, for the under65 population. 

And clearly these programs are growing at such an 

unsustainable rate that they will crash the economy, bring insolvency, and give us a debt crisis. And a core problem with that, and 
32 

I think everybody agrees with this, is health inflation. So, how do 

we get at the root source and cause of health inflation? There are 

basically, from my perspective, two schools of thought around here 

on how to do this. 

One is, have the government more firmly involved and more centrally directing the system in reforms through various mechanisms, 

formulas, price controls and things like that. The other is more of 

a consumer-directed, patient-centered system, to try and inject 

competition into the system, like we have seen in other sectors of 

our economy. 

I am trying to do justice to both schools of thought. But what I 

am trying to get at is, how do we get ourselves on a virtuous cycle? 

Because we are in a vicious cycle right now. The more money we 

put into it, the more inflation gets out of our control, the worse our 

deficit and debt become. How do we get this sector of our economy 

operating like the other sectors of our economy, where we are improving productivity, where we are actually lowering price increases, where we are actually rewarding performance, where we 

are actually increasing quality, lowering costs? And a lot of folks 

say, We just cannot do this in health care, because health care’s 

so different. Health care is, you know, a personal issue, it is so different. 

The reason I can see you, and your name, and the clock, is I got 

LASIK surgery, you know, 10 years ago. And LASIK surgery is an 

out-of-pocket expenditure. It cost me $4,000, then. I got it in Madison, at this place called Davis Duehr Dean, and ever since then, 

they have revolutionized this Excimer laser three times. It costs 

about $1,600 now. So the price has gone down, the quality has gone 

up. And that is just one area in health care. But it strikes me that 

it is not as if this sector, large sector, very important sector of our 

economy, is not immune from those market forces occurring. 

So how do we get ourselves onto a virtuous cycle, where we are 

stretching our health care dollars more, we are getting better quality in health care, and health inflation is not destroying our system, in health care and our budget? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Well, I very much agree with your premise here, 

which is, that is the key. How do we get on that virtuous cycle? 

And I do think the answer is to move away from a system where, 

on the margins, the Treasury is paying for a good portion of the 

cost inflation. In other words, what is happening today is that taxpayers are essentially underwriting extra inflation, because the 

way Medicare operates, the way Medicaid operates, and the way 

the employer-based system operates, as premiums go up, and automatically part of it is paid for by the tax system. That takes a tremendous incentive out of the system to adjust itself. 

So I think the first step is to recognize that government budget 

policy is already part of the problem. And addressing that, then, 

can start to have the opposite effect. 

Now, when I was last before this committee in January, this 

same topic came up quite a bit with, the witness who preceded me 

made a lot of news, it was the Chief Actuary for the Medicare program. He was asked about this a number of times. And his response was, very cautious; I do not want to speak for him. But he 

basically said, there is a hope that, when you move toward a sys-
33 

tem where consumers have limited support from the government, 

but also freedom to choose, that that will then incent, through competition and choice, the kind of dynamic you just referred to. 

And he also said, and I think this is very important, that it is 

not clear that the other approach, the approach you described, Mr. 

Chairman, that a centralized management of the system can get 

that kind of productivity leap that we really need. And in fact, if 

you look at the history of how Medicare has operated over the 

years, there is a strong incentive in the program. To really get productivity improvement, you have to start making choices. You have 

to say, This delivery system is highly efficient, and this other one 

is not. And we are going to reward the high efficiency one. Okay. 

The Medicare program has a very difficult time doing that, because you have to pick winners and losers. The private system can 

do that a lot better than a public system. The public system ends 

up saying, usually, We are going to pay everybody the same, at a 

low rate. That is how they cut costs, okay. But to really get productivity improvement in the health system, you have to start saying, 

We are going to reward the high achievers. We are going to reward 

high value and low cost. And to do that, that usually happens more 

easily in a market system than in a government system. 

Chairman RYAN. I could go on but in the interest of time, Ranking Member Mr. Van Hollen. 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am 

going to, I guess I will come back to that. But just to follow up on 

that point that was made, I think the American people would be 

surprised to learn that the private insurance market is working 

really well in terms of cost containment. As I referenced in my earlier remarks, between the years 2000 and 2008, health care premiums doubled in the individual private markets. So this is part 

of a larger conversation on the whole health care thing. 

If I could, Dr. Rivlin, I want to turn to health care in a minute. 

But first I want to address a couple of the other, larger issues with 

respect to our efforts to reduce deficits and our debt. And I want 

to thank you for your service to our country, in many capacities, 

most recently, of course, both as a member of the President’s Bipartisan Fiscal Commission and as the co-chair of the Rivlin-Domenici 

Commission. 

Now, with respect to the Bipartisan Fiscal Commission, you of 

course, supported the final result, but you made some important 

comments in your letter accompanying that report. And, with respect to the fiscal commission report, you said, and I quote, that 

you would have shifted the plan’s overall balance more toward revenue increase and less toward spending cuts, end quote. And then 

you went on to say, quote, that you do not believe it is wise, or 

even feasible, to cap federal revenues at 21 percent of GDP. 

Now, we have had a conversation this morning, a little bit, about 

how this is a very important subject that we are tackling today. 

But really, to get to the bottom of the deficit, that issue, we have 

got to expand that issue. I would say that, there is an article in 

The Wall Street Journal today that Mr. Camp, the Chairman of the 

Ways and Means Committee, is going to try and bring down the 

top marginal rate to 25 percent. I do not know how he is going to 
34 

do it, but it will be a huge, huge tax break, again, for the folks, 

highest income folks in the country. 

So if you could just explain what you meant when you said, 

quote, you do not believe it is wise, or even feasible, to cap federal 

revenues at 21 percent of GDP. 

Ms. RIVLIN. Right. We have this surge of retirees moving into our 

retirement programs. We have talked about this all through this 

hearing, how that puts upward pressure on Social Security spending, Medicare, and Medicaid. And although I support the reforms 

that will bend the curve in health care and I want to put Social 

Security on a firm basis, I do not believe it is realistic that we are 

going to be able to do the right thing by this much larger aging 

population and hold federal spending and revenues at 21 percent. 

So, in the Domenici-Rivlin plan, it goes up to 23, and I think that 

is more realistic. But we are going to have to fight hard to stay 

there. The upward pressures on the health care spending programs 

are enormous. And the challenge is very great. 

And as to tax reform, I saw the article about the Camp plan, and 

he served with Chairman Ryan and myself on the fiscal commission. The mistake there, I think, is to make it revenue-neutral. We 

are going to need more revenues. We need tax reform. And I think 

the kind of reform that Representative Camp is talking about is 

feasible, it is feasible to bring the rates down, but only if you get 

rid of almost all of, the loopholes and special provisions. And those 

go to upper income people differentially. 

So you can have a tax reform with lower rates and still have a 

more progressive impact. And we show how to do that in the 

Domenici-Rivlin plan. 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you. According to The Wall Street Journal article, if you brought the top marginal rate down to that level, 

you would have to find $2 trillion in savings through the other deductions, over the next 10 years; big, big number, when we say we 

want to reduce deficits and debt. 

In your letter accompanying the Fiscal Commission report, you 

also said, and I quote, you worry that cutting discretionary spending sharply as soon as fiscal year 2013 may slow the economy, end 

quote. As you know, HR 1 that passed in the House, cut significantly deeper, even immediately. We have recognized that we all 

have to tighten our belts, but given the fact that you were worried 

about the impact on jobs and the economy of immediate, deep cuts 

by 2013, I assume you have similar concerns about immediate, 

deep cuts of the magnitude we are talking about, on the economy 

and jobs. 

Ms. RIVLIN. I think the cuts in 2011, which we are halfway 

through already, would, of the magnitudes being talked about by 

the Republicans, would be ill-advised. But my main problem with 

that is, it is a distraction from the long-run problems that we are 

talking about today, which are the really important things to think 

about as we bring our debt under control. 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Right. And let me get now to the question of 

the Medicare reforms that you have been talking about. Because as 

you know, when Congress established Medicare back in the 1960s, 

one of the main reasons we did it is because seniors and disabled 

citizens had a very difficult time finding affordable health care, 
35 

given the health care risks they posed. That was the whole engine 

behind Medicare. 

Now, we have already tried several efforts at privatizing different parts of Medicare. You referred to one of them in your testimony, with respect to the Medicare Advantage plans. What we 

have discovered so far is that, in order to prevent some of them 

from dropping out, they actually had to increase the federal taxpayer subsidy beyond the subsidy for the fee-for-service Medicaid, 

up to 114 percent. 

So here is my question. In your proposal, you say you want to 

put in this voucher, premium support program, whatever you want 

to call it, by the year 2018. You have also said that you strongly 

support the Affordable Health Care Act, and that it would be a big 

mistake to get rid of it. And you have commented about the importance of the exchanges, which are set up under the Affordable Care 

Act, which as you know, would take place in the year 2014. 

So my question to you is this, that will give us some sense, will 

it not, about the extent to which this kind of exchanges and premium support can, in fact, lower costs? And why would we not 

make sure that we wait to see how effective that is, before we 

make the decision to experiment with the folks in Medicare? And 

maybe that was the purpose of your timing, for 2018. But it seems 

to me that we have a lot of people who are not insured, who are 

going to come into this exchange seeking more affordable health 

care. Let’s see how it works on them, 2014, before we turn all the 

seniors in Medicare into this experiment. What do you, what, what 

do you think of that? 

Ms. RIVLIN. Well, in the first place, we did not turn all of the 

seniors in Medicare in to this program. We gave them an option 

starting in 2018, by which time we hope we will have some experience with exchanges. And this would be a new Medicare Exchange, 

a national exchange, rather than state by state. But I think the importance of beginning to reform Medicare is that if you keep waiting until you get more evidence, you have the same problem that 

Charles Blahous was talking about. The longer we wait before we 

start doing something, the more expensive it is and the harder it 

is. So, I think 2018 is not too soon to offer an option to seniors to 

be on a well-organized exchange. 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Yes, my point was that we will have a pretty 

good idea in the year 2014, so I guess your timing would work. In 

other words, if that experiment was great, you know, but, but I just 

would not want to make a decision today with a pretty fragile population. Because it does shift the risks of increasing health care 

costs more onto the recipients, on the seniors. 

Ms. RIVLIN. If they choose it. 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Right. Well, as I understand it, either way. In 

other words, either you stay in the traditional Medicare system, 

but if the costs there rise faster, you have to pay more, or you get 

a voucher, where if it does not keep pace with the cost, you have 

to pay more. But I do not want to get in great detail right now, 

because I have limited time. 

Dr. Van de Water, one of the proposals that has been kicking 

around out there is to block grant Medicaid. In other words, say, 

the federal government is going to hand over its entire share of 
36 

Medicaid to the states, no strings attached, blank check, do what 

you want with it. 

Now, I think you know that under Medicaid, while the majority 

of recipients are not seniors in long-term care and disabled individuals, at least 50 percent of the money spent in Medicaid goes there. 

Could you talk about what impact a block grant of Medicaid would 

have, on all the populations? Because at the end of the day, I think 

people are going to have to ask themselves the question: which 

populations do they want to drop? Or what benefits do they want 

to drop? And I would just end by pointing out what you did in your 

testimony, which is, under Medicaid, in fact, the growth in costs 

has been far lower than in the private insurance market. If you 

could just comment on that. 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. Yes, Mr. Van Hollen. From my point of view, 

shifting Medicaid to a block grant, changing the current federalstate partnership to some extent flies in the face of how one should 

construct a sound federal fiscal system. 

First of all, it is quite clear that only the federal government can 

take responsibility for counter-cyclical fiscal actions, and clearly 

Medicaid is a very cyclical program. Costs go up substantially in 

periods of economic downturn, as we are still experiencing. And 

secondly, there is also a limited extent to which states can take responsibility for helping low-income people. States have to maintain 

a competitive tax situation. So no one state can get too far ahead 

there. So for both of those reasons, it is important that the federal 

government play a major role in Medicaid. 

The proposals to block grant Medicaid have as their stated aim, 

to reduce federal spending. And the result, therefore, is to place increasing burdens on states. The block grant proposals typically 

have, as part of them, elements that would further increase state 

flexibility in Medicaid. But I think all of the evidence suggests the 

room to increase efficiencies in Medicaid is quite limited, for precisely the reason that you indicated; that as in health care, generally a small proportion of the sickness beneficiaries account for 

a very large proportion of the cases. 

The implication is under a block grant, states would face increasing shortfall. And they could deal with that in one of two ways, either through increasing taxes on their residents, or through 

squeezing beneficiaries. And again, as you suggest in your question, that ultimately many categories of beneficiaries would be affected, but certainly including particularly the elderly and persons 

needing long-term service and support, and children, as well. 

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Like the Chairman 

said, Social Security, all these areas are areas we could have a full 

discussion. Maybe we will have a chance later to come back to it. 

But time is out, I thank all the witnesses. 

Chairman RYAN. And I just want to say, in the interest of our, 

our interest of having a bipartisan dialogue, Dr. Rivlin is our Republican witness who has come and spoke on behalf of the health 

care law. So that is how we try to do things around here. Mr. Garrett. 

Mr. GARRETT. Thank the Chair again for this very important 

meeting. I guess the seminal issue with regard to Social Security 

is, do we have a problem? And I say that somewhat tongue in 
37 

cheek. But if you were listening to the floor this past week, members from the other side of the aisle, discussing Social Security, off 

other issues, but bringing up Social Security, said there is no problem. That what we are all discussing here is fear-mongering. That 

there is still a positive cash flow going into Social Security at this 

point in time. I think we have heard it from the panel, but in 10 

seconds, from Dr. Blahous or Dr. Van de Water, can we assure the 

other side of the aisle who was on the floor this past week that we 

do have a problem with Social Security, that needs to be addressed 

today? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. I have no qualms in saying we have a substantial 

financing problem in Social Security. 

Mr. GARRETT. And the cash flow? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. It is clear that Social Security does face a 

long-run shortfall. Social Security is not running a deficit this year. 

One comes up with that result only if you ignore the important and 

substantial interest receipts that the program receives from its 

trust fund assets. 

Mr. GARRETT. But you have to consider that, correct? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. That having been said I agree with Chuck, 

that Social Security is facing a shortfall that should be addressed. 

The question is how to address it. 

Mr. GARRETT. Right. And on that point will be a follow-up question, then; one of the ways, both of you comment on this, and 

maybe this is too simple to put it, to go back to the way FDR originally intended it. And to do so, you talked about the issue of indexing, one element of that, correct? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. Right. 

Mr. GARRETT. The other element of it, though, would be, basically, a raising of the taxes, as the same tax rates, I mean the tax 

increase, and who would be subjected to it, the other element of 

that, correct? If we had done, if we do those things, hypothetically, 

that would solve the problem, but keep benefits at the same approximate level where they are today? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. Well, I am not advocating this. 

Mr. GARRETT. I am not advocating it either. 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. Technically, if the initial benefit formula 

grew exactly at the rate of inflation going forward, that by itself 

would eliminate the financing shortfall, and you would not have to 

increase taxes at all. Now, as it happens, we can actually afford, 

then, the projected tax revenue stream, a rate of benefit growth 

that is somewhat in excess of inflation. And to the extent that Congress decided to increase Social Security taxes, obviously we would 

be able to pay an even higher rate of benefit growth beyond that. 

Mr. GARRETT. So, Dr. Van de Water, just comment on that. Because your comment before is that, saying that the rates we are 

paying out, benefits you are receiving right now in Social Security 

keeps you at just about the poverty level, per individuals. And so 

if we just take those steps alone, that would just basically keep 

people at the same level. Would you be advocating keeping people 

at that level, as far as a benefit? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. No, I would not, sir. And let me first of all 

say that, while I agree with Chuck on a lot of issues, I do disagree 

with his characterization of the original structure of Social Secu-
38 

rity. Prior to 1972, Social Security benefits were adjusted for inflation for real wage growth, on an ad hoc basis. In 1972, those adjustments were made automatic, and the process was refined in 

1977, because the ’72 version had a technical flaw. 

But the basic approach, even before the automatic adjustments 

were formalized, was to maintain benefits roughly constant in relation to a worker’s pre-retirement earnings. And I believe that is an 

appropriate standard, and one we should attempt to stick with. I 

am not advocating against any benefit reductions, but I do think 

we need to look at benefits in relation to what a person earned during his or her working years, not simply in relation to the poverty 

level. 

Mr. GARRETT. I appreciate that. And very quickly, I only have a 

minute left, Dr. Rivlin, with regard to the proposals and with regard to premium support, two quick questions on that. One of the 

problems with premium support, I have heard, I think actually 

from folks in the Brookings Institute, is that the adequacy of that 

support going forward, and you touched upon this in your testimony, and whether or not that can actually be capped later, basically put an adequate level without coming back to Congress to 

raise that, which Congress would be probably inclined to do, as we 

have with Doc Fix and otherwise. And secondly, the timeline to be 

able to implement this; you are looking at about 2018. Who would 

we be affecting by going to a premium support model? Would we, 

we would not be affecting people who are 65 or older, but would 

we be affecting people younger than that? What would the implications be of that? 

Ms. RIVLIN. In the proposal, as we drafted it in Domenici-Rivlin, 

in 2018, everybody who was eligible for Medicare would have the 

option, but it would be an option of moving into premium support 

instead of staying in fee-for-service Medicare. And there might be 

an advantage to do that if, as we hope, the competition among clients does give people better care at a lower cost. But they would 

not have to move. 

Mr. GARRETT. Right. And the issue on the premium support, the 

fact that the adequacy of that premium support would be adequate 

over time, short of coming back to Congress and seeking additional 

appropriation as that amount goes forward? 

Ms. RIVLIN. That is a question, really, because we cannot tell 

what will happen to health care costs. If the reforms in the Affordable Care Act, and all of those pilots about better payment systems 

and better delivery systems, if those produce good results, and I am 

hopeful that they will, then premium support would be a mechanism for the plans choosing the best results and, but we cannot 

really tell. I think there is a good deal of uncertainty about whether the pilot programs and the research and all of the things that 

were called for, will actually produce results. 

Mr. GARRETT. Thank you. 

Chairman RYAN. Thank you. Ms. Schwartz. 

Ms. SCHWARTZ. Thank you, Chairman. And thank you to the 

panel. I was going to, I would submit, to everyone in this panel, 

I am going to submit for the record, a correction from the last hearing we had, nothing to do with the current panelists. Because I 

wanted to call attention to an incident that occurred at last week’s 
39 

budget hearing, in which a colleague of mine not only attributed 

false statements to me, but also breached the basic rules of decorum and civility in the house. He is a freshman, so he may not 

have understood those rules. 

But, I do not want to take the time at this hearing, but I know 

a colleague of mine had to do this before. But he really attributed 

false statements about an hour and a half, two hours after I made 

them. And I will submit, for the record, a repeat of what I said last 

time, about how we got to where we are over the last decade, before the great recession. Just a couple of years ago, relating particularly to Part D expenditures, the two wars that were not paid 

for, and the tax cuts that were not paid for, and how that attributed to the fiscal problem. I think the panelists would understand 

what I am talking about, but it really is a point for the record, for 

some of the members, and the way we actually try and conduct 

these hearings. And I know the Chairman was not here, I do not 

think, but I think he would have been equally distressed by them, 

had he heard them. 

So let me just move on to what is really a very important topic 

for us to deal with, which is, of course, cost containment and entitlement reform. Two questions I am going to try and get to in my 

time, which is that, one, as Dr. Rivlin pointed out, there are really 

important reforms and modifications and flexibility provided, in the 

health law, related to paid performance for hospitals, the different 

kind of payment opportunities in accountable care organizations 

and health innovation zones. I believe many people have said we 

have incorporated into the health law all of the good ideas about 

how we can both improve quality, improve outcomes, and reduce 

costs over time. 

You pointed out, there are no guarantees, but there is enormous 

opportunity to do that. And I just wanted you to really reiterate 

how your feelings about the importance of implementing those reforms, and what repeal would do, if we were to take away those 

opportunities and begin again, and not in fact, move our providers 

and all the payment systems to a better system of reimbursement 

and improved quality. 

Ms. RIVLIN. Right. I do believe that almost every idea about improving quality and reducing cost was incorporated in some way, 

usually as a pilot program, into the Affordable Care Act. And we 

need to fund it, and we need to record the results, and get them 

out there so that people can see what is a better system. 

Ms. SCHWARTZ. And to grow them. The word pilot sometimes 

means to people that we are going to just do a few of these. The 

difference between a pilot and a demonstration, as you know, is 

that they can grow, they can be as big, they can be used as much 

as we want them to. 

Ms. RIVLIN. Yes, and if they work, they can influence the whole 

system. So I think there is great potential there. I also believe in 

the exchanges. And that we need to fund those, get them working 

well, and see if this approach does produce good results. 

Ms. SCHWARTZ. Right. And the purpose of those exchanges is, as 

you know, is because the individual marketplace is such a failure 

in this, the private market. The individual marketplace is the most 

expensive and inaccessible, that it is very difficult for individuals 
40 

to buy affordable coverage, meaningful coverage. And so, the reason for the exchanges is just that, is to help provide a marketplace 

where they can compare coverage. And we do not know how that 

is going to work, but we do know that you have to fix a failed system that does not provide for that. 

And yet, your suggestion is that we offer to seniors some support, 

for them to be able to buy insurance in an exchange. And yet, 

healthy, younger individuals have had a very hard time buying insurance. Do you think that only the healthiest, youngest seniors 

would be able to find affordable, meaningful coverage in an exchange, and only the very sickest seniors would stay on fee-forservice Medicare, making fee-for-service Medicare even more expensive per person? 

Ms. RIVLIN. No, not if we were to set up the exchanges in the 

way that we envision. 

Ms. SCHWARTZ. So you are saying there really have to be regulations, this would have really clear federal regulations on the way 

it would be done, for it to work? 

Ms. RIVLIN. Yes. It has to be an organized exchange in which 

they have clear choices. 

Chairman RYAN. Thank you. Mr. Akin. 

Mr. AKIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a couple things that 

I have noticed in some of the questioning, and it is an interesting 

point, and that is that supposedly a lot of cost growth in private 

insurance. Now my understanding, and anybody wants to take a 

shot at this they can, Mr. Capretta, maybe start with you. My understanding is the reason for the cost growth in private insurance 

is because of cost shifting. 

I mean, when I think back, I am getting a little long in the tooth, 

before the Civil War, maybe not quite that bad, but, it used to be 

that a lot of people had what is called a major medical policy. And 

those were pretty reasonable and affordable policies. But over time, 

as different corporations and all would bid the price, they would 

get discount prices on health insurance that was then balanced, the 

major medical policy had to pick up the difference from the hospitals. It is my understanding there was cost shifting. Is that why 

it would appear sometimes that a private policy looks like it is 

going up because it is really paying for other people as well? And 

if not, what does cause it to go up? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Well, I think that could be part of it. Certainly 

there is lots of evidence that public programs paying below market 

rates does result in private insurers being charged more for similar 

treatments that then drive up premiums on the private side. So 

that does occur. But I think the issue in the private health system 

is, we do not really have a marketplace today, actually. 

I think, fundamentally, it is incorrect to sort of say that we have 

a private market in health insurance today, in large part because 

it is dominated, of course, by employer-provided insurance. And 

that insurance enjoys a tax break, federal tax break, that then 

most observers of the health system have said, over the years, contributes substantially to, you know, moving more compensation 

into health and out of cash, okay. So one reason why people’s 

wages have not gone up very much in the last 10 or 15 years is 

because so much of it has gone toward health care. And that, then, 
41 

contributes to health inflation, as well, okay, so I think it is really 

incorrect to think that today’s system is an observation of a private 

economy at work, because it is sorted very substantially by the current federal tax break. 

Mr. AKIN. So I think the Chairman’s example of LASIK surgery 

would be more like a free market, because the government was not 

involved in that at all. It was a cash-type business, and as the 

years progressed, the technology improved. And the price goes 

down, the quality goes up. So that is more of an isolated, free market system, while you are saying the other is very heavily influenced by all of the other players, first of all a tax policy for big corporations, and second of all, the impact of Medicare and Medicaid 

in the other place. 

Mr. CAPRETTA. That is correct. 

Mr. AKIN. Okay. The second question, there was discussion, and 

this is sort of interesting. I have heard on this committee a number 

of times, repeatedly, mostly from the Democrats, that cutting government spending could hurt the economy. And that is sort of a 

weird idea to me. I always thought that we had examples from 

JFK, and Reagan, and Bush, that when we would reduce taxes, we 

could keep government spending down, that tended to help the 

economy grow. Relative to what we are talking about here today, 

if we try to do some things in Social Security where we are not 

spending as much on Medicare because we have come up with a 

better system, does that endanger the economy, or does not that 

really make the economy stronger, if we can address the tremendous deficit that we are looking at? 

Ms. RIVLIN. Let me try that. I think, when you are in a recession, 

or coming out of a recession slowly, as we are now, there is a risk 

that if you cut government spending too rapidly, you will endanger 

the recovery. But in the long run, the biggest danger to our economy and our future prosperity is the rising debt that we are facing, 

for all the reasons we have been talking about here. And I think 

the major point that people ought to keep in their heads is, if we 

have a debt crisis, then we will have a deeper recession than we 

are in now, and it will be harder to get out of it. So the point is, 

we can have any size government we want, but we have got to pay 

for it. 

Mr. AKIN. I appreciate your answers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman RYAN. Mr. Doggett. 

Mr. DOGGETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I certainly agree with 

you that we need a serious discussion with the American people 

about these issues. I think, though, that the issue is whether or not 

that discussion is narrowed to the sole question of how Americans 

want to compromise and reduce the level of their retirement security. And I think we need a much broader focus. 

Dr. Rivlin, you testified yesterday, along with the former Republican Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. 

Ms. RIVLIN. I do not think he is a former Republican, he is a 

former Chairman. 

Mr. DOGGETT. No, he is an active Republican, but he is a former 

Budget Chair, to be sure, Senator Domenici. And you both testified, 

I believe, that you can do all the things that you talked about this 

morning, and the other witnesses, with reference to retirement se-
42 

curity. And if we fail to include the revenue side, as you responded 

to Mr. Van Hollen, if you fail to address the revenue side, we will 

fail to get our fiscal house in order, is that correct? 

Ms. RIVLIN. Yes, I believe that we cannot cut spending, especially 

as the baby boom generation retires, enough to solve this problem, 

on the spending side alone. 

Mr. DOGGETT. At a time when the revenue to Gross Domestic 

Product, or economy ratio, is at the lowest level in over 60 years, 

you certainly did not embrace the notion that the Republicans are 

advancing, in today’s Wall Street Journal, that we can add another 

$2 trillion of tax cuts to the burden that we already have, with reference to debt, did you? Either of you. 

Ms. RIVLIN. I do not read Mr. Camp’s proposal as adding $2 trillion. The thing that distresses me about Mr. Camp’s proposal is 

that he says it is revenue-neutral. And I do not think we can afford 

revenue-neutral. We need more revenue going forward. 

Mr. DOGGETT. And Senator Domenici agreed with you in testimony yesterday. And I think the problem here, we talk about a serious discussion, is that that serious discussion really needs to 

begin in the House Republican Caucus. The mythology that we can 

assure our military security, our educational security, our retirement security, without any additional revenue, is a mythology that 

just does not comport with reality and the challenges that our 

country faces. And very interrelated, as you pointed out this morning, is this question of rising health care cost. 

And I think you would agree, Dr. Rivlin, that when you talk 

about Medicare and Medicaid, we are really talking about parts of 

a broader question of how, in America, we can continue to improve 

the quality of health care and contain the cost of that health care 

in a way that it can be affordable for the taxpayer and for the individual. And with reference to that, I do not know of a broader attempt to deal with this difficult issue, did not go far enough, in my 

opinion, but a broader and more comprehensive attempt, than the 

attempt to rein in health insurance monopolies last year through 

the Affordable Health Care Act. Just one example of our efforts 

that I know you support its comparative effectiveness. 

Republicans keep saying, they do not want to know what works. 

They have attempted to limit the funding for implementation of 

looking at comparative effectiveness plans. They do not want to 

eliminate their privatization experiment with paying $1,100, 

$1,200 more per beneficiary of Medicare advantage, another way 

that we sought to reduce cost. You certainly support comparative 

effectiveness investigation, do you not? To be sure we know what 

works? 

Ms. RIVLIN. I do. And I think the Affordable Care Act contains 

many provisions that would help us learn how to deliver more effective care, and at lower cost. 

Mr. DOGGETT. Now, Dr. Van de Water, my concern is about shifting more risk to individual retirees. And I know Dr. Blahous, having been the Executive Director for the Bush attempt to, what we 

feel is to privatize Social Security, feels that that is a better way 

to go. But is it your feeling that privatizing Social Security and 

shifting more risk by eliminating Medicare for those who are 65 or 

66, and moving to a voucher plan, that that will provide either the 
43 

fiscal security or the retirement security that generations of retiring Americans need and deserve? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. Well, let’s distinguish, look at both Social Security and Medicare, briefly. As far as Social Security is concerned, 

I think Social Security’s importance should, you know, should be 

maintained in the future, particularly in the light of the shrinkage 

of defined benefit pension plans in the private sector. I sometimes 

describe Social Security privatization as an idea whose time has 

passed. At one point, when large numbers of workers had defined 

benefit pension plans, there was an argument that putting that together with Social Security meant we were over-weighted in that 

direction. That certainly is not the case today. 

Social Security is now going to be the only defined benefit pension plan that most workers have, and I think it is important to 

retain that as a base on which people can build their 401(k)s, other 

retirement arrangements, and their personal savings. 

As far as Medicare is concerned, I think, as the dialogue this 

morning has already confirmed, I mean, particularly the discussion 

early on between the Chairman and Dr. Rivlin, the details of how 

a premium support plan is set up are very important. Congresswoman Schwartz asked, a moment ago, about the structuring of 

the market that would be required. Now, I am not a great fan of 

premium support under any circumstances, but in the form that 

Dr. Rivlin has laid it out, in her proposal with Senator Domenici, 

they have attempted to deal with these issues. In other versions, 

those issues are not dealt with as well. 

Chairman RYAN. Thank you. I just want to keep the time going, 

so everybody has a chance. 

Mr. DOGGETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Chairman RYAN. Mr. McClintock. 

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. I would begin by pointing out to the gentleman 

that revenues are important, and they come in one of two ways. 

Revenues come from economic growth and expansion; that is the 

healthy way. The unhealthy way is by extracting higher taxes at 

the expense of economic growth and expansion, and that ultimately 

becomes a self-defeating exercise. 

I wanted to follow-up on Mr. Akin’s question regarding the private health market. The Chairman makes a very good point. He 

references his LASIK surgery, that is entirely done outside of the 

government, or private insurance markets, simply a cash transaction. As he described that, I was reminded of whole-body imaging. We are seeing the same thing there. We are now seeing reports of general practitioners that are simply withdrawing from the 

insurance market, withdrawing from the government support market, and simply going on a cash basis, fees-for-service, entirely outside of that process. 

So, Mr. Capretta, you mentioned that a lot of the costs, and of 

course, the Ranking Member also makes a good point, that Hey, 

the private insurance market has doubled in cost between 2000 

and 2008. Mr. Capretta, you make the point, a lot of that is government intervention. Is that the principle cost driver in the private 

insurance market? Because we are certainly seeing a decrease in 

costs, and an increase in quality, in the cash market. 
44 

Mr. CAPRETTA. You know, this is a very important question. I 

would argue that the number one reason why our health delivery 

system looks the way it does today, actually, the number two reason is probably the employer tax provision. But the number one 

reason is actually Medicare fee-for-service. Medicare fee-for-service, 

good as it is in terms of providing security to our elderly population, the health system has basically been built up around its 

structure. And the way it works is that you have a fee-for-service 

insurance program. And most seniors also have, in addition to that, 

supplemental coverage. So between retiree wraparound plans, 

Medigap plans that they buy in the private market, or Medicaid for 

the low-income seniors, the vast majority of seniors at the point of 

service pay no additional cost sharing. 

So fee-for-service only really works if there is some cost sharing 

on the part of the participant. Because, otherwise, you know, it is 

a, basically, a claim gets filed, it gets paid by the government. So 

if the beneficiaries are not paying anything at the point of service, 

and the government is paying, you know, claims any that come in, 

you have got a system that is really built for volume. And our 

whole, much of our medical system has been built up around that. 

There was a very famous article, well-known article, that was 

written a year or so ago, in the New Yorker Magazine, by Atul 

Gawande, about McAllen, Texas, and how they have a high volume, 

very intensive delivery structure. Why did that happen there? The 

number one reason there was Medicare fee-for-service. It is a good 

program in the sense that it is providing good security, but it is 

driving fragmentation and lack of coordination in our health system in a way that is very costly. 

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. So have we entered a vicious cycle, where the 

principle cost driver in the Medicare system is rising medical costs, 

and the reason for rising medical costs is government interference? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Well, there is some truth to that, yes, that it is 

sort of a circle, yes. That government policy is driving up costs, and 

then, to try to make up for that, they cut fees. In other words, the 

predominant way of trying to get costs under control over the last, 

I would say, 30 years, has been to reduce the payment rates that 

public insurance has paid for individual treatments in a fee-forservice environment. There have been some other efforts around 

that, but the main way has been to try to reduce the fee structure. 

That tends to then also drive up volume even more. So it has gotten into a little bit of a cycle of cost increases, pay cuts, cost increases, and pay cuts. 

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. Mr. Blahous, is there any way for us to honor 

the commitments we have made to everybody in the Social Security 

system, and yet move that system to an actuarially sound foundation? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. Absolutely. But again, I would stress, it is much 

easier to do that the sooner you act. 

Mr. MCCLINTOCK. And again, very briefly, what would you recommend we do, to accomplish that? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. Well, if you are asking my policy views, I tend to 

regard the two biggest sources of our fiscal problem as being population aging, and growth in the per capita value of benefits. CBO 

did a report in 2003 where they said, if you look at cost growth and 
45 

Social Security, 55 percent of it is population aging, 45 percent is 

excess cost growth in the benefit formula. So I would start with 

both of those things. I have to think, you have to look at the retirement age, I think you have to look at the benefit formula as well. 

There is also a set of changes I think, personally, that should be 

made, to improve the program’s impact on labor force participation 

decisions. There are a lot of aspects of the Social Security system 

that are designed, basically, to drive people out of the workforce, 

because they reflect the 1935 design. Everything from the actuarial 

adjustments for early and delayed retirement, to the way that your 

personal wage history is tracked. All of these things basically punish you if you decide to add an extra year of work and continue to 

pay taxes. And I think we should change some of those. 

Chairman RYAN. Thank you. Mr. Yarmuth. 

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all of the 

panel. One of the things that becomes pretty clear when you are 

either discussing Dr. Rivlin and Senator Domenici’s plan, or the 

roadmap that the Chairman has proposed, most of the ideas coming from the Republican side result in some kind of increased shifting of risk to senior citizens, when we are talking about the Medicare program. At least that is my observation. 

So I would, what I would like to ask is, particularly Dr. Van de 

Water and Dr. Rivlin, what do you think, since we know that right 

now, of all Social Security recipients, senior citizens, about twothirds rely on Social Security for at least half their income, and 

one-third rely on Social Security for their entire income. How much 

cost-shifting or risk-taking do we think is reasonable to move toward the senior citizens under Medicare? Do you have a sense, 

what percentage of their income now is consumed by health care 

cost, and what it might be reasonable to assume we could do? What 

the impact of these proposals might be. 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. If I could start, and then pass it on to Dr. 

Rivlin. I think your basic diagnosis of the situation is correct, that 

we do have to be careful in avoiding shifting additional risk onto 

those beneficiaries who are least able to bear it. In my view, any 

plan to restore Social Security’s solvency needs a balance between 

scaling back future benefits and raising taxes, and I think it has 

to be designed in a way that protects low-income beneficiaries. And 

with that, I will pass it on to Dr. Rivlin, since I think the proposal 

that she and Senator Domenici have made, while I would not endorse it in all respects, is a reasonable illustration of how that 

might be done. 

Mr. YARMUTH. Yes, Doctor. 

Ms. RIVLIN. I think you pose the dilemma very well. We have a 

very expensive system of providing health care for older people, 

and we have more and more older people. I do not believe that we 

can afford, in the long run, to keep fee-for-service Medicare, because it is going to get more and more expensive. And because of 

the impact, I do not agree with everything Dr. Capretta said, but 

it does, instead of Medicare leading the whole system toward better 

efficiency, it in many ways deters it. 

So, we have to balance shifting more risk onto older people, and 

I would shift it more onto upper-income older people. And the need 

to get Medicare into a sustainable long-run posture, so that it is 
46 

more efficient and providing better service for less money. That 

does not mean we are going to spend less over time; we are not 

going to spend as much more as we will on this trajectory. 

Mr. YARMUTH. Well, I think everybody agrees with that, that is 

the goal we ought to establish. The how-to is a little bit more difficult. In your report with Senator Domenici, you talked about potential savings in other areas of the government as well, and we 

focused today on Social Security, Medicare, and obviously they are 

long-term drivers of potential increase in the debt. It is my understanding that Senator Domenici and you concluded that waste and 

abuse in the Defense Department, if you just crack down on that, 

could save over $1 trillion over the next six years. Is that correct? 

Ms. RIVLIN. I do not remember the exact number, but we proposed a hard freeze, meaning no increase in nominal dollars, for 

Defense, for five years. And we believe that we can have a strong 

Defense if we use our Defense dollars more efficiently. And Secretary Gates has been one of the leaders in trying to do that. It 

requires reform in the procurement system, more contributions to 

the tri-care system on the part of retirees, and a better ratio of the 

tooth-to-tail, as they say, in defense. And I think we can do that 

and still be the strongest nation in the world, by a long shot. 

Mr. YARMUTH. Correct. Well, thank you for that, and I hope 

maybe we can have a hearing on that in this committee, as well. 

I would love to ask another question, but my time is rapidly ending, so I will yield back. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. LANKFORD [presiding]. Thank you very much. Mrs. Black, 

Tennessee. 

Mrs. BLACK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I thank the panel 

for being here today. I do not think there is any doubt about us 

all agreeing that the debt crisis is here upon us. And we all do 

agree on that. I know that there is a difference of agreement on 

what we should do on these very large programs that are consuming 60 percent of our budget. And yet, if you were to look at 

what the public appears to think that the answer is, they think 

fraud, waste, and abuse, and cutting out our Foreign Aid, will solve 

our problem. And, obviously, that is not going to solve the problem. 

But I would like to hear from each of you, how you believe that we 

can get the public to understand the problem that we have, and 

that we need to make some changes. I would like to hear your 

opinion on that. 

Ms. RIVLIN. I think the public is actually way ahead of politicians. When you get a group of average citizens in a room and say, 

Here is the problem, we have this looming debt, and if we go on 

doing what we are doing, we will have a huge crisis. Now, what 

do you think we ought to do about it? And we have done this quite 

a lot. They come up with pretty sensible solutions. And they are, 

as in both of the two commission reports, a little of this and a little 

of that. 

They are willing to cut benefits on entitlement programs, they 

are willing to hold firm on discretionary spending, once they understand what that means, and they are willing to raise revenues as 

well. And the evidence from groups of citizens brought together to 

solve this problem is, I think, rather encouraging. 
47 

Mrs. BLACK. Doctor, I do want to say that, what I am reading 

in most of the publications now, when the public is asked, they do 

not see Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as being a part of 

the solution. They continue to say, waste, fraud, abuse, and cutting 

foreign aid. That is what I am even hearing in my town halls, back 

in my district. 

Ms. RIVLIN. Right. But that is because they have not realized 

that they have to make choices. I think it is the responsibility of 

politicians to bring this problem home. To say, We have to make 

some choices here, and not to say, It is all very simple, it can be 

solved by growth, or It can be solved by getting out waste, fraud, 

and abuse. That is not true, and I believe that political campaigns 

on both sides have not helped the public to understand, we have 

got a big problem here, and we have got to make choices. 

Mrs. BLACK. Anyone else? Would you like to jump in there, Doctor? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. I would just say that, I mean, I have been working 

on Social Security reform for 15, 20 years now. And the one thing 

that I have learned is that I have no earthly idea how to communicate to the general public the real urgency of the problem. I 

wrote, recently, a book about Social Security reform. And I did say, 

in the book, that I thought our public debate about Social Security 

was not where it should be. And there is a lot of blame to throw 

around for that. And I think there is blame that goes both sides 

of the aisle, I think there is blame that goes to the advocacy 

groups, I think there is blame that goes to the press. There is a 

lot of blame to be allocated. 

But I actually singled out, in my book, one particular community, 

for criticism. And that is the community of which I am a part right 

now, which is the community of scholars, and academics, and people in think tanks. Because too often, I think, people in positions 

like mine have a tendency to want to, kind of, echo the predilections of their funding sources, or their political allegiances, when 

people in positions like mine are actually in a very privileged position, where we are somewhat immune from the political pressures 

that face all of you. And so I would point the finger of responsibility back to those of us on this panel, because I think there is a 

much better job that needs to be done by people in our position to 

explain these issues to the public. 

Mr. CAPRETTA. I am not like Chuck, I do not have any particular 

expertise in this area. I think you do more than me, all of you here 

do more than I, but I guess I would just generally say that there 

is a difference, I think, a little bit, between polling responses that 

people give to off-the-cuff questions, and a reasoned discourse that 

they enter into with average citizens, as Dr. Rivlin referred to. 

And, in general, my confidence is pretty high that in the old saying 

that we will do the right thing after trying everything else, right? 

So I think a reasoned discourse around our choices, and the difficulties of them, will lead to the correct solution. 

Mrs. BLACK. Dr. Van de Water? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. I think Chuck Blahous is a little bit too hard 

on himself. Chuck and my colleague Bob Greenstein, as Chuck 

mentioned in his testimony, wrote a paper a few months ago, outlining the dimensions of the Social Security financing issues and 
48 

the reasons why the problem is real, and why solving the problem 

sooner rather than later would be a good thing to do. And Chuck 

and my organization do not have the same perspective on how to 

solve the problem, but we do agree on the dimension of it. And I 

think that that kind of information can be made more widely available. 

Mrs. BLACK. Thank you. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. Mr. Pascrell. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My friend from Tennessee asked some pertinent, interesting questions. I must inform 

her, and I do seriously respect your position, but that movie has 

been seen over and over again. We started this mess in 2001. And 

for me to have to sit here and listen to the reruns, instead of looking to the future, because this is what politics and government 

should be about. Where will our people be tomorrow, and two years 

from now? We heard this in 2002, we heard it in 2003. In fact, at 

that time, the head of OMB was Mr. Daniels. And he said then 

that revenues declined two years in a row, fiscal year 2004 he is 

saying this, the first such phenomenon in over 40 years. 

Why did revenues decline in those two years? Revenues declined 

in 2002 by seven percent, the largest percentage decline since 1946. 

And, as it turned out, the 2001 tax cut was the right policy, he 

said. And he concluded that we need to have another tax cut, 

which they did, reducing revenues and, quote unquote, strengthening investor confidence by ending the double taxation of shareholder dividends. Thank you, Mitch Daniels. 

And what did we have? No growth in jobs. Nada. Zero. I do not 

know how else to say it. We did not have what they said we were 

going to have. The greatest contributor to the deficit, look at the 

facts, and we go over it over and over again. Mr. Chairman, people 

in my district tell me they appreciate Medicare and Social Security, 

not because they have been polled on it. So I want honest discourse. That is exactly what we need. Real discourse that remembers where we have been, and the old movies that we have seen. 

We kept the basic structure, but included new delivery and payment reforms in the health care reform. In fact, we did begin the 

process of changing the entitlement programs. If you read one-third 

of the health care bill, which is devoted to Medicare and Medicaid, 

I cannot reiterate enough; health care reform was the beginning of 

entitlement reform. I said, the beginning. No one could deny health 

care reform extended the life of Medicare by 12 years. To date, the 

only action this majority has taken at entitlement reform was the 

vote to repeal health care reform. 

Some of our witnesses today believe the best way to reform Medicare would be, partially, to privatize it. Our Chairman also supports this idea through his roadmap to make Medicare a voucher 

program. Clear and simple, we have seen this over the last two 

years. I want to have a vote on this. I think I deserve a vote. Everybody here deserves a vote. And Chairman, I would like to ask 

the Chairman, through the Chair, are we going to get a vote, are 

we going to get an opportunity to vote on the voucher program, 

which is our answer to changes that must be made in Medicare? 

I want to know, right now, are we going to have this? This idea 

is a bold idea. The Chairman’s idea. And I think we should talk 
49 

about it. I think we should have discourse about it. And I think we 

should have that discourse right here. I encourage you, I encourage 

you to bring this up as we mark up the budget resolution. Do you 

support having such a vote on the roadmap? And is this what this 

committee is going to do? 

Let me ask that question first, and the Chairman is not here. So 

let me continue, if you wish to answer it, go ahead. According to 

Standard and Poor’s index on health care, in 2010, health costs 

covered by private insurance rose by 7.75 percent, compared to 

Medicare, which increased at a modest 3.3 percent. The report is 

here, it is succinct, it is in the Standard and Poor indexes, it is 

very uncomplicated to read this. Medicare, as it is currently structured, controls costs better than private insurers. 

And Weiner was right in today’s Politico, when he said we have 

dealt with the opposite of what the loyal opposition is saying. This 

is the core of the matter here, Mr. Chairman. This is the core of 

the matter. It is the record. Block grants and vouchers are not the 

answer. If we are talking about controlling costs for our budget, I 

do not see the sense in moving seniors from a lower-cost insurance 

provider to a higher-cost insurance provider, do you, Mr. Van de 

Water? 

Mr. LANKFORD. Actually, there is not time to be able to respond 

to that. Time has expired. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Can he answer the question? The question is over. 

Can he answer? 

Mr. LANKFORD. Your time has expired about 30 seconds ago on 

that, actually, though. We will let you follow up on that in a coming question, if that fits in well. Will that be all right? Mr. 

Mulvaney. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Happy St. Patrick’s 

Day, everybody. With a last name like Mulvaney, I cannot help but 

be in a good mood today, which is rare for a budget meeting, I can 

tell you that. You sit here long enough, as you can tell. So let’s 

focus today on some positives, maybe. Ms. Rivlin, I will begin by 

disagreeing with you slightly. You said that the folks back home, 

while they might believe that something has to be done, they have 

not yet figured out that they have to make tough choices. I would 

suggest to you that it is us, up here, who have not figured that out 

yet. That, as we go around the debate today, everybody seems to 

say, Well, we need to do something. 

But face it, Washington, in my mind at least, as someone who 

has only been here a couple weeks, is not famous for making its 

tough choices. But I did hear some things today, from your testimony, from the questions that you have gotten, that we seem to 

agree on, which is that we all want to keep the basic promises. 

There is no one up here trying to abrogate our responsibilities, 

there is no one up here trying to break the social contract. We are 

trying to figure out how to do it. And what I have also heard is 

that, in order to do that, we have to do something. We have to do 

something. 

My understanding of the law is that if we do nothing, then, in 

the next 25 years or so, the benefits will be cut across the board, 

22 percent. That is without any additional congressional action. 

When you get your check in the mail 20 years from now, it will 
50 

automatically be 22 percent smaller than it would have otherwise 

been. So we have to do something, and we seem to agree on that. 

We also seem to agree that we have to do something sooner rather 

than later. Now, there will be disagreements as to what sooner or 

later means, and there obviously will be disagreements as to what 

the structure of the change will be. But let’s start the discussion 

by focusing on the things that we agree on. 

And let me make a suggestion to you, then, with that backdrop. 

If someone came to you today and said, You know, let’s not do anything for 20 years. Let’s do absolutely nothing about this for 20 

years. Can you help me understand, each of you, and we will start 

with Mr. Van de Water because you did not get a chance to answer 

the last question. If we do nothing, where are we in Social Security 

20 years from now? And if you could keep the answer short enough 

to give everybody a chance to respond to that, that would be great. 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. Yes, Mr. Mulvaney. You are quite correct, 

under the current financing schedule, that the Social Security program will face a problem in 2037, and at that point, if nothing is 

done, benefits would have to be cut by approximately 22 percent. 

Clearly, it would be, I have said several times today, I agree with 

Chuck Blahous, that it would be better, other things may equal to 

solving that problem sooner rather than later. 

But the difficulty is coming together on some sort of a plan on 

which to do it. And certainly I would say that, if it were my choice, 

I would rather not act sooner, if it meant adopting what I thought 

was a very poor solution. But I would rather wait if I got a better 

solution. Chuck might feel the same way, although his view of a 

good solution and a bad solution might be exactly the opposite of 

mine. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Capretta? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Well, in the next 20 years, the population aged 

65 and older is going to go from about 41 million, roughly, today, 

to I think about 71 million in 2030, something like that. So we will 

have added a pretty good, sizable portion to the population over 

that. As a consequence of that, the amount of spending that will 

be associated with these major entitlement programs will probably 

go up by about five percentage points of GDP. So we spend, in 

rough terms, roughly 10 percent of GDP on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. In 20 years, it will be roughly 15 percent of 

GDP. 

So you are adding a pretty good size to our budget without any 

new way to pay for it. I doubt that we will get through that kind 

of pressure in our budget without major dislocation of some sort. 

We would have to, probably would stumble our way into a very 

major and punitive tax increase and, maybe, simultaneous to that, 

still have a debt crisis, because you would end up running up a lot 

of debt. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Mr. Blahous, very briefly. 

Mr. BLAHOUS. Well, I see three major effects [inaudible] in the 

system, as costs in the system rise over the next 20 years. To the 

point where, although it is allocated between payroll taxes and income taxes, workers are having to shell out $1 out of every $6 they 

earn to keep Social Security going. That is the first effect. The second effect is, when you act, you get the most unfair solution pos-
51 

sible. If you wait until that point, you are going to have net benefit 

losses of four percent of the wage income of younger generations. 

That is a net loss. That is not the total burden of Social Security. 

That is the amount they would lose, even if they got back all the 

benefits they were promised. Third is, you might not be able to get 

it done. We already have a bigger problem to solve than they had 

in 1983. They almost did not solve it, on the brink of insolvency. 

We should not assume we are going to be able to solve it without 

chaotic consequences in the 2030s. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Ms. Rivlin, we are not going to get a chance to 

get your answer, we are out of time, I apologize. I would put it to 

you, and to everybody at the meeting that that is exactly what the 

majority leader in the Senate suggested last night that we do, 

nothing, for 20 years. That is what the Senate is suggesting, as of 

last night. Thank you. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. Honda. 

Mr. HONDA. Mr. Chairman, I would like to yield 30 seconds to 

Mr. Pascrell, so that Dr. Van de Water can respond to the last 

question that he had. 

Mr. LANKFORD. No issue with that. 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. I believe that the question was about Medicare’s record and cost increases. And I would simply agree with 

what Mr. Pascrell said, and say that result shows up not only in 

the recent Standard and Poor’s data that he cited, but also, if you 

look at the comparisons that the CMS actuary puts out, and the 

national health expenditure accounts, comparing growth of private 

health insurance and Medicare, for comparable benefits over a long 

period of time, you find exactly that same result. So I think, yes, 

you are right, that Medicare’s record in holding down the rate of 

growth of costs is much better than some of my colleagues here 

have given it credit for. 

Mr. PASCRELL. Thank you, Mr. Van de Water, thank you, Mr. 

Chairman, thank you, Mr. Honda. 

Mr. HONDA. Thank you. Dr. Rivlin, early on, you mentioned that, 

when we were talking about HR-1 activities, you indicated that 

what we are doing right now is a serious distraction. Could you 

elucidate us, or, you know, expand on that comment about serious 

distraction from what, and what is it that we should be doing? 

Ms. RIVLIN. I was referencing the intense debate and negotiation 

over the continuing resolution for 2011. However one feels about 

how that should come out, it is a very small amount of money for 

a very short time, and I believe it is a distraction from the serious 

issue that this committee is focused on today; the long run growth 

of entitlements and other spending beyond revenues. We have got 

to fix that to avoid a serious debt crisis and nothing that we do on 

the remaining months of 2011 is going to affect that very much. 

Mr. HONDA. Thank you, Dr. Rivlin. You also mentioned that you 

have a plan with Chairman Ryan that turns Medicare into a program much like the Affordable Care Act, by creating regulated exchanges, offering certified insurance products populated by socialized buyers. You have stated that this will unleash innovation that 

will greatly reduce costs. In that case, would not you agree that the 

Affordable Care Act, the only genuine entitlement reform either 

party has passed into law this century, will unleash the same inno-
52 

vation, reducing health care costs and addressing our deficit and 

debt? 

Ms. RIVLIN. I hope so. I strongly believe that the Affordable Care 

Act has the potential to bend the cost curve. I also believe in the 

exchanges, as a mechanism. I have failed to understand why Republicans believe in exchanges, perhaps, for Medicare, as the 

Chairman and I have suggested, but not in the context of the Affordable Care Act. There seems to me a disconnect in the thinking, 

but that is where it is. 

Mr. HONDA. If I heard you correctly, did I hear you say that you 

and the Chairman had, come up with this joint plan, but the Chairman himself does not support the idea, the concept of exchange in 

this plan? 

Ms. RIVLIN. No, he does support it for Medicare premium support. But I am not going to speak for the Chairman. 

Mr. HONDA. I do not, I do not expect you to. 

Ms. RIVLIN. But Republicans, in general, have not supported the 

Affordable Care Act, which also includes exchanges. 

Mr. HONDA. And the vote on that, Affordable Care Act, is not, I 

believe that they just about all have voted for repeal. Dr. Van de 

Water, I have almost a minute, little over, not quite a minute. You 

were shaking your head a couple of times when Dr. Capretta was 

responding to Mr. McClintock’s question. Would you explain why 

you were shaking your head on that one? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. Oh, I apologize for shaking my head. 

Mr. HONDA. No, I read motions and we are human. 

Dr. VAN DE WATER. It is hard to remember the question. But I 

think the issue was the same as with regard to Mr. Pascrell’s question about Medicare’s role in controlling costs. I think that describing Medicare as the source of cost growth rather than as a way of 

controlling it is, in some ways, 180 degrees from the situation. In 

fact, in many cases, Medicare has taken the lead in efforts to control costs, through introducing new payment arrangements such as 

the DRG arrangements for hospitals and the prospective payment 

for physicians. So I think that that, I suspect, is what I had in 

mind. 

Mr. HONDA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps the witnesses, 

in their closing comments, can explain to me, explain to us, the 

issue of increased revenues. What that means, and where does it 

come from. Perhaps later. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Yes. Perhaps in the days to come, or the moments to come. All right, Mr. Huelskamp. 

Mr. HUELSKAMP. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the conferees being here today. And I am going to start with admitting 

that I do have a particular bias. I spent 14 years in the state legislature, and struggled with the issue of Medicaid. And I would be 

curious of a couple comments, starting with Dr. Rivlin, and then 

Mr. Capretta. Your thoughts on the issue, the Medicaid block 

grants proposal, which is being seriously considered, I believe. So, 

Dr. Rivlin, your thoughts on block grants, to turn them over to the 

states for further approach. 

Ms. RIVLIN. I think Medicaid is a very difficult issue for everybody, because we all want the most vulnerable people to get Medicare. But the program is not working extremely well. In the 
53 

Domenici-Rivlin plan, we suggested, we did not actually recommend it, we suggested that one way would be, one way to reduce 

costs was to get rid of the matching and to divide the program between federal responsibility, which might be for the younger people, and state responsibility, which might be for long-term care, 

those are of comparable sizes. 

But there are other ways to do it. I do not think a block grant 

is a solution by itself, unless there are quite strong maintenance 

of effort and other provisions that keep states from just bailing out 

of the program. And, but I think one could do that. 

Mr. HUELSKAMP. Mr. Capretta. 

Mr. CAPRETTA. I very much agree with Dr. Rivlin on the issue 

of the matching payment program. First of all, Medicaid’s big and 

complicated, you really can divide it into, sort of, two parts. It has 

an acute care part, with lots of people, but the spending is relatively low. And there is the disabled and elderly population on 

Medicaid, which is a more complicated question, and most of the 

spending is associated with them. 

But for the acute care portion of it, in particular, I think the real 

question is, how do you get away from this matching approach, 

which creates all kinds of distortions at the state level? As I indicated in my testimony, because of the way the matching program 

works, many states, even though they would certainly like to save 

a lot of money in Medicaid, if they take out $1, they only get to 

keep maybe 30 cents of it, okay. So this incentive to go through 

that political process is quite low. And it turns out that many 

states have kind of gone in the opposite direction, which is, to figure out ways to get more federal matching money for things that 

used to be state-only money. And so they go through a lot of exercise in that, and then they try to minimize, in all fairness, the pain 

that is associated with their own state contribution through a lot 

of different mechanisms. 

So the matching program has created a number of distortions, it 

has inflated Medicaid costs. I think the key is to get away from 

that, and to get toward a system of defined contribution. I, very 

much in terms of the exchange program, I think exchanges actually 

probably would be a good idea for the Medicaid population. Trying 

to get them into a system of defined contributions so that they are 

making some choices about their coverage, much like the workingage population. 

Mr. HUELSKAMP. And I appreciate that. One of my frustrations 

has been that, for states that have occasionally asked for waivers 

for that particular approach, multiple administrations of both parties have not looked kindly on those proposals. But I think, in the 

history of our country, obviously with potential for innovation at 

the state level, my other bias is, I do not think all the answers to 

health care innovation are in this town. And we will see enormous 

changes in Medicaid, whether it is my home state of Kansas, where 

we actually have a doctor who is also Lieutenant Governor heading 

up a task force on doing that. 

And, but if we want innovation, we want changes, we want to 

bend the cost curve, there are other solutions and answers out 

there, and I appreciate the recognition of the cost-sharing. But you 

are absolutely right, it is actually not cutting back, it is going for-
54 

ward. If we spend $1 dollar, we get free money from Washington 

there is a dollar and a half, and it has been always a big argument 

for growing budgets, whether or not you make any changes to the 

health care system. You cannot. It is just about more money or less 

money, and not a lot of those waivers. But then, we cannot secure 

proper waivers there. 

But on the other hand, with the President’s health care plan, you 

know, we have over 1,000 waivers already granted for that. And 

then we still do not have the particular waivers we want in Medicaid. So I think we will see some real innovation there going on, 

and the defined contribution is certainly a way to go. So I appreciate that, and thank you, Doctor, as well. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. Mr. Tonko. 

Mr. TONKO. Thank you, Mr. Chair. While we are here today debating programs like Social Security and Medicare, in terms of 

profit margins and the bottom line, I think it bears reiterating that 

Social Security is not a campaign promise. It is the real contract 

on America, and spoken with America. Our constituents have paid 

in hard-earned dollars, fulfilling their responsibility in that contract. And every proposal I have heard coming out of the majority 

lately entails the federal government defaulting on its end of the 

bargain, cutting benefits for my constituents, our constituents, benefits that they have a legal, moral, and political right, I believe, to 

collect. Meanwhile, we turn a blind eye to tax expenditures grossly 

skewed to benefit the wealthy, at a far greater cost to our nation. 

So Dr. Van de Water, I would like to, I have asked the committee 

to bring up a chart prepared by your organization, now, on this 

screen. You would never know it listening to our debates around 

here lately, but tax expenditures in this country well exceed our 

annual spending on so-called entitlement programs. Dr. Van de 

Water, can you explain this chart, please, for a bit? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER Not having had the benefit of LASIK surgery, 

I cannot actually see it very well. 

Thank you. This chart, the pink and red bar on the left, shows 

total estimate of individual tax expenditures, and it compares those 

with the middle bar, cost of Medicare and Medicare, and the right 

bar being Social Security. And it just shows that if you added up 

all the individual and corporate tax expenditures, that there are 

larger either than Medicare and Medicaid put together, or Social 

Security by itself. And I think it just suggests that there is room 

to help restore solvency to Social Security and to maintain Medicare and Medicaid through modestly paring back on tax expenditures, rather than having to slash the benefits of the programs. 

And I think that Dr. Rivlin has referred to much the same thing. 

Mr. TONKO. So to sum it up, then, tax expenditures exceed, as 

we can see, the total annual cost of Medicare and Medicaid combined. They also, as we can see, exceed the cost of Social Security. 

They exceed the cost of non-security discretionary spending that 

the majority is so keen on eliminating. And yet Representative 

Ryan’s roadmap, which is a starting point for your budget discussions this year, proposes decreasing revenue, raising taxes on the 

middle class, lowering taxes on the wealthy, and cutting benefits 

under Medicare and Social Security. As I see it, we are asked to 
55 

cut health and retirement entitlements to pay for tax entitlements 

for the wealthy. Dr. Van de Water, I know you are familiar with 

the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles Commission. What 

concerns me most about the commission’s proposals and about the 

Ryan roadmap is that we are talking about cutting basic benefits 

for our seniors, our retirees, our widows, our children, and the disabled. My question for you, Dr. Van de Water, is, do you think that 

these proposed benefit cuts will, to use the title of today’s hearing, 

fulfill the mission of health and retirement security? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER Well both the roadmap and Bowles-Simpson 

are long and complicated, but let me just focus on the Social Security part of both. The Bowles-Simpson proposal relies, to my mind 

disproportionately, on cutting back Social Security benefits. The 

mix between benefit cuts and revenues is 60-some-odd percent benefit cuts, averaged over the first 75 years, but in fact it is about 

80 percent benefit cuts at the end of that period. I think that probably some modest benefit cuts are inevitable, but I certainly think 

the Bowles-Simpson plan is heavily over-weighted in that direction 

and the Ryan roadmap even more so, since as I recall that exclusively involves benefit cuts and nothing in the way of revenue increases. 

Mr. TONKO. And your thoughts on eliminating the taxable cap to 

bring more dollars into the trust fund? Or any other proposals that 

you would back? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER Certainly, the limit on earnings subject to the 

Social Security tax has shrunk in the sense that it captures a 

smaller proportion of total earnings today than it did back in the 

late 1970s and early 80s, on account of the growing disparity in 

earnings. And I think it certainly would be a good idea to increase 

the cap so it gets back towards covering at least 90 percent of earnings, as it did not all that long ago. 

Mr. TONKO. Thank you very much. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. Dr. Van de Water, I apologize. We 

seem to always be gaveling you out. You seem to be the last question on a lot of these things. So, Mr. Young. 

Mr. YOUNG. First, I would like to thank all our panelists for your 

time here today. This has been a very instructive conversation and 

I appreciate your help. I am going to build upon an earlier reference by Dr. Rivlin, the health exchanges. I happen to have opposed the Affordable Care Act, for the record, but not on the 

grounds of the exchanges. There are those of us who, on principled 

and intellectually honest grounds, opposed that act because of the 

individual mandates and certain other provisions. And I know that 

you are aware of that, I just did not want anyone to infer otherwise 

from your comments. 

Ms. RIVLIN. Thank you. 

Mr. YOUNG. Mr. Capretta, CBO projects, regarding the Affordable Care Act, that 23 million people will be enrolled in these new 

health exchanges. Do you believe this is a conservative estimate, or 

something that is perhaps not generous enough in terms of those 

who will end up in those exchanges? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. I tend to view that as being slightly on the conservative side. Maybe more than slightly. The reason is that first 

of all, I think the number of people who are subsidizing the ex-
56 

changes because CBO says that though some people will go into 

the exchanges and not be subsidized. But the number of people 

subsidizing the exchanges will be about 19 million, if I remember 

right. And I think the numbers being subsidized could be substantially higher than that, because I think the subsidy structure inside 

the exchanges is quite a bit more generous on the low end of the 

wage scale compared to the tax preference that people would get 

from an employer-based plan. So there would be a tremendous 

magnet for particularly people on the low side of the wage scale to 

get their insurance through the exchanges because their after-tax 

income, if you will, would go up quite a bit if that were to be the 

case. 

Now, CBO and others have said that first of all, in Massachusetts, there has not been a lot of that yet. And number two, there 

are rules in the law that say if an employer puts their low-wage 

workers in the exchanges, they have to put their high-wage workers in there too. And the high-wage workers would not like that because they would be worse off. So the question is what is going to 

happen? Will the labor markets start to segregate over time? There 

is so much money at stake associated with these subsidies and the 

exchanges, though, I believe, as the history of entitlements has 

been over the last four decades, the population tends to grow with 

the money available. And so I really strongly believe that the number who could end up in the exchanges, once employers figure out 

how to rearrange themselves, take advantage of it to the maximum 

extent possible, the number could be well, well above 19 million. 

You have to understand that the population that the subsidies 

are aimed at is huge. It is between 133 and 400 percent of the poverty line would be eligible for discounts in the exchanges, potentially, if you look at the census data for people under the age of 

65, that is potentially about 110 million people. So you know, we 

are looking at a very substantial entitlement expansion if everybody ended up in them. Now I do not expect all of them to, but one 

estimate by a former CBO director looked at this and said, if just 

everybody under 250 percent of the poverty line ended up in the 

exchanges, the amount of spending in the bill would go up, in 

rough terms, by about $1 trillion over 10 years. 

Mr. YOUNG. Thank you. Dr. Rivlin, this next question is directed 

your way. You know, I have been sharing with my constituents for 

some time that those who have the greatest stake in entitlement 

reform, all variants of it, are those who are the most vulnerable. 

They depend disproportionately upon the continued existence of Social Security, of Medicaid, and to the extent we can address this 

earlier rather than later, it will certainly benefit those populations 

more than others. It was brought to my attention, a recent column 

by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post, and she describes herself 

in the column as a Deficit Panda as opposed to a Deficit Hawk. 

Ms. RIVLIN. Yes, I liked that. 

Mr. YOUNG. And I think that was elegant. I am going to quote 

a bit from that and just get your brief comments. We do not have 

a whole lot of time left. She writes, in part; Then there is the group 

about which we deficit pandas care most: the poor and working 

poor. They are at the greatest risk from a financial crisis, not merely because of the prospect of losing jobs. Higher interest rates 
57 

would drive up housing costs while budget pressures would further 

squeeze funds for public housing. Spending on education from preschool through college would be threatened, income inequality 

would increase, educational failures would slow economic growth. 

We have about 15 seconds left. Do you agree with her assessment? 

Ms. RIVLIN. I do, and I think those who worry most about the 

vulnerable, and in the context of entitlement programs particularly, need to keep in mind that if we do not fix this debt problem, 

we are in deep trouble. And people who suffer most in a recession 

are the poor and the working poor. But that does not mean that 

we cannot fix the entitlement programs in a way that does protect 

the vulnerable. And in the Social Security plan in Domenici-Rivlin, 

we do that. 

Mr. YOUNG. You and I agree on that important point, and I do 

believe from my first reading of it, is that you succeed in that endeavor. Thank you. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. Ms. Castor. 

Ms. CASTOR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to all the 

panelists for being here today. Mr. Capretta, I was very surprised 

to hear you hold up Medicare Part D as a model for us here in the 

Budget Committee, because when it was adopted, it was not paid 

for. There were no offsets, there was no dedicated financing, and 

I think that was very irresponsible. It has added a great deal to 

our national debt. Do you know how much it has added to the deficit and debt, Medicare Part D? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. I do not, no. Not off the top of my head. I probably could calculate it. 

Ms. CASTOR. Well, the latest estimate is $385 billion. You were 

with OMB, and Dr. Blahous, you were an advisor to the President 

at that time. I know the estimate then was $407 billion. Now, 

thankfully, it is only $385 billion, but why did you think adding 

that amount to the deficit and debt was a good idea? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. I will take this question if you want me to. First 

of all, it is important to recognize that both sides. It was on a bipartisan basis that people were pursuing prescription-drug coverage in 2002 and 2003. The major alternatives, actually, that were 

offered as substitutes for the bill at the time it was passed by a 

lot of those who eventually opposed the bill and did not cut the cost 

or did not pay for it. They actually would have added even more 

debt and more spending. 

Ms. CASTOR. But that does not get to the question of why. 

Mr. CAPRETTA. No, no. I just want to make sure you are clear 

that there is a bipartisan consensus at that time to pass a prescription-drug benefit and Medicare. 

Ms. CASTOR. So, there is a lot of responsibility to go around. 

Mr. CAPRETTA. I just want to make sure the record is clear about 

what the alternative was. The other point is that at the time, the 

reason why there was a lot of momentum to pass a prescription 

drug benefit was because it was the only major insurance program 

in the United States, and it was for seniors, that did not have coverage. 

Ms. CASTOR. You are not answering my question on why it was 

unpaid for, and why you thought it was a good idea to push ahead. 

Dr. Blahous, do you have an answer? 
58 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Well I was about to get to that if you wanted me 

to, but go ahead, Chuck. 

Mr. BLAHOUS. I mean, speaking very broadly here, because at 

the time I was with Social Security only and was not involved with 

the prescription drug discussions at all, but I think Jim said it exactly right. President Bush had campaigned on a prescription drug 

benefit, there was a sense that Medicare needed to be modernized 

to include a prescription-drug benefit, and I think the Bush White 

House saw its role in this as basically, within the realm of the possible, which was, We are going to pass a prescription drug benefit, 

trying to make sure that was done in the least cost way. 

Ms. CASTOR. All right, then the second part of the question is, 

why did you tie the hands of Medicare to negotiate? A lot of cost 

estimates now that if Medicare had the ability to negotiate, that we 

could save an additional $20 billion plus, maybe more. The extension of existing price-negotiation with Medicare would really help 

us as we talk about entitlements and Medicare savings. Five years 

now into Medicare Part D, price status shows that Part D plans 

are failing to deliver on the promise that you mentioned in your 

testimony, Mr. Capretta, that competition would bring down prices. 

The adopted approach has not resulted in drug prices that are 

comparable to the low prices negotiated by the Veterans Administration. Your structure that prohibits Medicare from using its negotiating clout on behalf of the 43 million seniors and others in Medicare to obtain low drug prices is costing us all money. It is costing 

seniors, it is costing taxpayers much more than it should. I think, 

moving forward, our budget framework needs to consider Medicare 

Part D becoming more cost-effective by eliminating the prohibition 

that prevents Medicare from bargaining for better prices. Do you 

all have a comment on that, Dr. Rivlin? 

Ms. RIVLIN. Yes, I think that giving Medicare more negotiating 

power would have been a good thing. And I would also like to point 

out that we did not do Medicare prescription-drug in the 1990s 

when I was OMB director. We did not because we did not have a 

way of paying for it, because we were working under the PAYGO 

rules. And what happened after 2002 was, the PAYGO rules went 

away and that was the consequence. 

Ms. CASTOR. Thank you very much. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. Mr. Rokita. 

Mr. ROKITA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to the witnesses for coming today. I apologize, I had to leave in the middle 

of this to go to another committee and badger another set of witnesses. But I am back now, and have a couple of hopefully quick 

questions. I just want to go right down the line, if I could, so if you 

could keep it real short. I am still digesting your testimony as I alluded to but Dr. Rivlin, would you be in favor of doing a needs test 

for Medicare? Am I understanding things right, or not? 

Ms. RIVLIN. We already have an income-adjusted premium in 

Part B. Yes, I think that the premium can be adjusted to income. 

Mr. ROKITA. In terms of services, are you willing to give the safety net, which I call a safety hammock now, rein it in a little bit? 

Ms. RIVLIN. I think we would have to have a much more specific 

discussion about what you had in mind before I could give you a 

yes or no answer. 
59 

Mr. ROKITA. But the concept would be okay? 

Ms. RIVLIN. The concept of upper-income people paying more is 

okay with me, and we have already done that. 

Mr. ROKITA. Doctor? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. Specifically on Medicare or on Social Security? 

Mr. ROKITA. Well, I will skip you, since you are Social Security. 

I was thinking about Medicare. Mr. Capretta? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Well, I agree with Dr. Rivlin. I am for needs-testing the Medicare program going forward, even more than we have 

done. We have done it already to some extent, and I think even 

more could be done going forward. That is not the solution to the 

whole problem, though. You would need to do a lot more than that. 

Mr. ROKITA. Okay, thank you. Doctor? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER Yes, I think that having income-tested premiums, as we now do, is a reasonable thing to do, and that could 

perhaps be modestly expanded. But as far as doing the means-testing through the tax system is clearly the efficient way to do it. 

Having a separate means-testing system for the benefits, I think, 

does not make sense at all. 

Mr. ROKITA. Okay, thank you. Dr. Rivlin, you mentioned that you 

had focus groups and you would lay out the problem and everyone 

would come up with solutions. I agree with that from my anecdotal 

evidence in doing town halls. My question to you, specifically and 

very briefly is, were these groups willing to cut their own benefits 

or were they talking about future benefits? 

Ms. RIVLIN. Yes, I mean, I have found even groups of seniors are 

willing to consider cuts. They are very concerned about their grandchildren when they really focus on what the problem is. 

Mr. ROKITA. Thank you very much. Dr. Blahous—am I pronouncing that correctly? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. Yes. 

Mr. ROKITA. Thank you. You are a Social Security trustee. You 

said if we do not address the issues within a couple years, we may 

not get this kind of opportunity going forward. You also said you 

had no earthly idea how to communicate the problem. I am going 

to give you an earthly one to shoot down. I get this nice color brochure that tells me how much I am going to get in Social Security 

if and when I retire, and all that sort of thing. It is about four or 

five pages. You are familiar. What is prohibiting us from laying out 

the problem there? And if there are some laws prohibiting it, 

maybe you can help me change those? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. There are actually no laws prohibiting it. And it 

is actually material that Congress has occasionally wrestled with 

in the past, and directed Social Security Administration to include 

additional information in it. 

Mr. ROKITA. Do you have to wait for Congress? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. No. The Social Security Administration can make 

periodic revisions to this. Now as you would imagine, whenever 

they make revisions people on both sides of the aisle Congress look 

very carefully over their shoulders as they do so to make sure that 

they are not slanting it one way or the other. But it is periodically 

revised. 

Mr. ROKITA. That is fine. And as this panel has pointed out, this 

is not political anymore. This is about the solvency of a nation, in 
60 

my opinion the greatest one the world has ever seen. So I do not 

know why we cannot use that as a medium. Go ahead, Doctor, if 

you like. 

Dr. VAN DE WATER Just to add very, very quickly. It is my recollection that the Social Security Statement already contains some 

information about the long-run financing issues. 

Mr. ROKITA. Not like this. Not with the charts. Not like the good 

conversation that we are having today and that this nation needs 

to have, but I appreciate it. 

Dr. VAN DE WATER Well, clearly not to that extent. 

Mr. ROKITA. Yes, okay. Can I see the tidal wave chart? Do you 

have it ready? There has been talk that raising taxes would be a 

huge help in solving this problem. Someone, it was maybe not at 

this hearing today, but I have heard that would be the only solution that is needed. I want each of you to tell me if I am reading 

this chart wrong. If I understand it right, by just past 2021, if this 

government confiscated everything this nation produced, we would 

still not be able to pay for these programs. Is that accurate or not? 

Ms. RIVLIN. In the very long run, yes. 

Mr. ROKITA. About 2081? 

Ms. RIVLIN. Yes, 2081 is quite a long time from now. I do not expect to live that long. 

Mr. ROKITA. No, 2025. 

Ms. RIVLIN. But I think to say we cannot solve this on the tax 

side alone, because we would have to raise taxes continuously until 

they were taking over the whole GDP, which is your point. But we 

cannot solve it entirely on the spending side alone, either. We have 

got to do both. 

Mr. ROKITA. I yield back. Does anyone on the panel disagree with 

what was said? 
61 

Mr. CAPRETTA. I would like to. 

Mr. LANKFORD. I would like to be able to defer that question. We 

will be able to pick it up, so thank you. 

Mr. CAPRETTA. All right. 

Mr. ROKITA. I yield back. Thank you to all four of you. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Ms. Bass. 

Ms. BASS. I think that is working now. I thank the witnesses for 

taking their time for coming, and I particularly wanted to thank 

Dr. Blahous. Did I say that correctly? And Dr. Rivlin for your comments that you made about the need to really educate the public, 

and our responsibility of that on both sides of the aisle. So I wanted to ask a couple of questions to clarify—I am not sure, I do not 

believe anybody on the panel is a physician, correct? So I am a 

former medical professional and so when I hear you talk I am trying to translate some of what you are saying, your language and 

your theories, into patient care. And so I believe it was Mr. 

Capretta who was talking about the choices that people would have 

to make, high achievers, you talked about productivity in the 

health care system, and I am trying to understand what that 

means. 

I mean our Chairman, he is not here right now, but he used a 

comparison with LASIK surgery, and I understand what he was 

talking about then in terms of that being market-driven, and you 

can shop around for that. But that is cosmetic surgery. It is elective. It is not a bypass. So could you please explain to me what you 

were talking about when you were talking about increasing productivity, a high-achieving provider, what does that mean? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Well the actual bill, the Affordable Care Act, tries 

to do a lot of that through mechanisms of the Medicare program. 

What they are trying to do is by paying hospitals and physicians 

in particular and clinics that they are associated with differently 

depending on how well they perform, that they will reorganize how 

they do business. The intake of patients, what happens to a patient 

when they see them, what they do after the patient is discharged, 

they are trying to make that process of patient care more productive. That is, use less economic resources and deliver better health. 

Ms. BASS. Yes, but what I was asking for was your opinion in 

terms of what needed to be done with Medicare, not so much the 

Affordable Care Act. 

Mr. CAPRETTA. That needs to be done. The question is what will 

bring that about more quickly and more rapidly and more continuously. And I tend to be a skeptic that through regulations and 

Medicare payment adjustments, that that is going to work very 

well. Because we have tried that in the past. It tends to devolve 

into across-the-board payment rate reductions instead of more efficiency on the part of providers. 

Ms. BASS. And I will ask you in one second. So if not that way, 

are you suggesting a market formula works? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Absolutely. 

Ms. BASS. And if you are, could you please explain what that 

means for a patient? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Very much like what Dr. Rivlin has proposed as 

part of premium support, the theory here and the thought is that 

if you limit what the government is providing to an average-cost 
62 

plan or perhaps something slightly below an average-cost plan, the 

beneficiary can then make some choices. They can decide on the insurance type of arrangement they want, plus the delivery structure 

through which they get their care. If they choose one that is more 

expensive, they do pay a little bit more out of pocket. If they choose 

one that is more efficient, they get to keep the savings. That is the 

structure of what we are trying to get at here and my own judgment is that that will lead to more rapid change on the side of the 

delivery structure, than trying to push it along through regulation. 

Ms. BASS. And I guess my concern, and then I will ask you Dr. 

Van de Water for your opinion, but my concern about that is that 

I think it is going to lead to less care. And I think it is going to 

lead to people making choices that, you know, could result in someone losing their life. 

Mr. CAPRETTA. You know, if I could comment on that. It is not 

really well-known, but the recently passed health care law actually 

does put in effect a limit on Medicare spending. There is a substantial risk already in place in current law that the beneficiaries actually will not be able to get access to care, despite the talk of delivery-structure reform. That goes towards what they are paying for 

services, so the Medicare actuary says, That is likely to fall below 

what Medicaid pays. 

Ms. BASS. Okay, and I am sorry, I do not mean to cut you out, 

but I am running out of time, and I want Dr. Van de Water to 

reply. Thank you. 

Dr. VAN DE WATER Speaking as an economist, I certainly would 

have to agree with Jim Capretta that cost-sharing, if wisely used, 

has a role to play in making sure that medical spending is done 

efficiently. But like you, as I perceive your question is suggesting, 

I think the role for additional cost-sharing is somewhat limited. It 

is well-known based on past studies that when people cut back on 

the amount of care because of cost considerations, they often cut 

out care that would be valuable as well as care that might not have 

been particularly productive, because we as individual consumers 

are not necessarily good judges of what is helpful and what is not. 

Ms. BASS. Right, that is right. Exactly. Thank you. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. Mr. Stutzman. 

Mr. STUTZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you panel 

for being here as well today. I guess just for the record, I wish Mr. 

Pascrell was here. We were glad that Mitch Daniels came back to 

Indiana to be our governor, because we have a balanced budget and 

we have jobs that are being created in Indiana. So just for the 

record, Mr. Chairman, I would like to state that we were glad to 

have Mitch Daniels back in Indiana, back from Washington. 

Mr. Van de Water, you mentioned future beneficiaries for Social 

Security would be even more dependent on Social Security in the 

future, and you stated that view because few of them will be covered by employer-sponsored defined benefit pension plans. Why do 

you say that and are there not other options out there for individuals personally? And the reason I ask is because when I was 18 

years old I was just a farm kid, I started my own personal IRA because I am not expecting Social Security to be there. There are 

plenty of other options as well. And a new poll just out today shows 

that 81 percent of Americans fear for Social Security. So I think 
63 

Americans are getting the message as well, and seeing that. But 

there are other options besides defined benefit pension plans. We 

should not just put all the weight on employers. 

Dr. VAN DE WATER Oh absolutely sir, and I was not meaning to 

suggest the contrary. Let me just say two things. First of all, why 

do I expect that fewer retirees in the future will have defined benefit pension plans? Simply if you look at the charts of coverage, in 

defined benefit pension plans for workers that fraction in private 

industry has shrunk dramatically in recent years. If you are interested, that chart appears in one of the papers I recently did for the 

Center on Budget. Obviously Social Security should not be the sole 

source of retirement income for most people. My older daughter 

and her husband, who have recently entered the workforce, are 

putting everything they can into their defined contribution accounts and I definitely encourage them to do so, and you made a 

good decision when you were younger. Although I might add, not 

exactly for the reason you said. I believe that Social Security will 

be there for my children and my new granddaughter. The question 

is what it is going to look like. 

Mr. STUTZMAN. Yes, exactly. I hope it is as well, and I think if 

we make decisions today that we can secure for the long term. I 

guess I would like to just ask for the panel, for each of you, and 

I think we will start with Dr. Rivlin. CBO says that the health care 

reform bill will both reduce debt held by the public and increase 

debt subject to the limit. How can this be? 

Ms. RIVLIN. The limit is on gross debt, including the surpluses 

in the trust funds, and if everything goes as scheduled in the Affordable Care Act, it would improve the prospects of the Medicare 

trust fund. 

Mr. STUTZMAN. Dr. Blahous? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. This is a very important point, because as Dr. 

Rivlin said, there are savings in the bill that extend the solvency 

of Medicare. That results in the issuance of additional debt to the 

Medicare trust fund. The statutory debt subject to limit is basically 

approximately the gross debt, which includes the debt issued to the 

trust fund. So in a sense, we are committing additional dollars to 

paying Medicare benefits in the future, but at the same time those 

dollars were also used as an offset within the unified budget for the 

new health entitlement. And because they have been basically committed to both purposes, this causes gross debt to actually rise 

under the bill. 

Mr. STUTZMAN. Okay, thank you. 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Nothing more to say, other than to say that 

Chuck has got it exactly right. 

Mr. STUTZMAN. Would you like to add to that, Dr. Van de Water? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER The only thing I would add is, again speaking 

as an economist, most economists would agree that the measure of 

the debt we should be looking at for purposes of considering whether or not we are approaching a fiscal crisis is the debt held by the 

public, not the gross debt, which is important but for other reasons. 

Mr. STUTZMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. Mrs. Moore. 

Ms. MOORE. Thank you so much. I have a couple questions, first 

on Social Security, for Dr. Paul Van de Water and also for Mr. 
64 

Capretta. You indicated in your testimonies that we needed to 

make some fixes to Social Security, and Dr. Van de Water, you said 

we could do that with very modest fixes, and I am suggesting perhaps removing the cap and increasing payroll taxes modestly with 

wage inflation. Would you agree with that? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER Yes, I would. 

Ms. MOORE. All right. And Mr. Capretta, you said that we need 

to fix Social Security without raising taxes. Could you share with 

me what those ideas are? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. I think you might be confusing me with Chuck. 

I am not sure. I did not have anything in my written testimony 

about that. 

Mr. BLAHOUS. And I, and by the way, I did not. 

Ms. MOORE. I thought I heard you say we could do it without 

raising taxes. 

Mr. BLAHOUS. It can be done without raising taxes. 

Ms. MOORE. Okay, maybe I did not. So what would that be? 

What would the skeleton of that be? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. You could do it through a combination of changes 

to the retirement age, to the benefit formula. There are other 

things that could be changed, such as the actuarial adjustments for 

early and delayed retirement, the way the system keeps track of 

your wage history. A grab bag of things. 

Ms. MOORE. Do you want to answer, Dr. Rivlin? 

Ms. RIVLIN. Yes, you could do it. But I think most plans, in order 

to reduce the burden on the benefit side, would say, ‘‘Let’s raise the 

cap gradually back to the 90 percent of earnings where it started.’’ 

Ms. MOORE. Okay, thank you so much. I want to ask a question. 

I appreciate all your expertise. I think the most stunning testimony, for me here today was yours, Mr. Capretta. You indicated 

that the cause for increases in Medicare were largely due to the 

fact that Uncle Sam will just pay any amount that is out there. I 

think in Dr. Rivlin’s testimony, she cited a couple of things. The 

rapid increase in health care spending due to ever-expanding medical capabilities, technology, laser surgeries, tummy tucks, whatever. Then Mr. Young came back and asked you a question about 

the numbers of people that might be in the exchange. You said it 

could go as far as up to 110 million people. It sounded almost like 

we need to recruit you to advocate for the public option. If, in fact, 

that this unbridled increase in health care costs is due to federal 

health care spending, employer taxation or tax exemptions and 

Medicaid and Medicare expenditures, the best thing to do would be 

to have something like a public option to say, ‘‘Hey, we are not 

going to pay these huge fees anymore.’’ We are going to offer people 

an opportunity to come into the government public-option exchange. Respond to that, please. 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Well I actually do not agree with that. 

Ms. MOORE. Well I know you do not. 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Just for the record, I do not. 

Ms. MOORE. But to say that Medicare is driving the health care 

costs, seems like you have turned it on its head. So what are you 

saying? 
65 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Well maybe I will take on the responsibility of 

saying yes, I do basically think that is the problem. I mean, Medicare fee for service is the dominant payer in most markets. 

Ms. MOORE. So all we have got to do is just say We are not going 

to pay you this anymore? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. No, I did not say that. 

Ms. MOORE. And that will drive down private health insurance? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. Well actually, the delivery structure is the same 

pretty much for everybody, right? So the question is, why is the delivery structure organized and operating the way it does today? 

There are a number of reasons, but the number-one reason is Medicare fee-for-service. 

Ms. MOORE. Okay, can you respond to that, Dr. Rivlin and Dr. 

Van de Water? 

Mr. CAPRETTA. But just for a second, the point is to allow a little 

bit more, as Dr. Rivlin has proposed, structure where the delivery 

system can be reformed by beneficiary choice. I think that is the 

key. 

Ms. MOORE. Dr. Van de Water? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER I would disagree with Jim on this. When 

Medicare was established in 1965, it basically followed the payment practice that existed in the private sector at that point. It did 

not lead, it was following. But after not too many years, as the effects of that system became clear, Medicare started to innovate in 

many ways. I mentioned that in my answer to Mr. Honda, although I think I actually got things backwards. First, Medicare instituted the DOG systems for hospitals, later the fee schedule for 

physicians, and in those cases it has become the leader for changing payment mechanisms. Further changes are needed, but I think 

Medicare has been in the forefront in many cases. 

Ms. MOORE. And since the hearing is almost over, I can ask you. 

There is one other person. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Yes, your time has expired. 

Ms. MOORE. Sorry. It was just a stunning testimony, I mean. It 

is such a great education here on this committee. You know, you 

are going to be educated beyond belief. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Thank you. Let me recognize myself for a moment, for a few questions I wanted to be able to bounce off you 

briefly, and that is dealing with the incentive. I hear senior adults 

that will talk about, Nine hundred dollars is all I have to live on 

with Social Security, and they are saying that that does not reach 

the cost of living, that it is not poverty, and I hear within their 

question the assumption that all the retirement I will have will be 

Social Security. What incentives would you recommend for future 

generations when they think about retirement, to not think about 

Social Security as the 401(k) sitting out there that is the sole part 

of their retirement? Have there been incentives that you have seen 

to be able to encourage people to say, ‘‘You need to have your own 

retirement plan, and this is supplemental to that’’ 

Mr. BLAHOUS. If I could, I would make a couple of points. One 

is that I think sometimes, we do not think about this in the best 

way in the sense that we say, well people have these challenges to 

their retirement security, ergo, we need to make bigger promises 

from Social Security, even beyond what we can now afford. But we 
66 

have to remember, Social Security is not immune to risk right now. 

We have a substantial political risk right now. People’s benefits can 

and must be changed under current law, and the political risk, the 

risks their benefit stream continues to grow the longer that this 

problem is not dealt with. So we have to be very careful about telling people, The solution to your retirement-security problem is for 

the government to make more promises in Social Security that it 

already does not know how to fund. 

Beyond that, I personally am of the view that we should be making changes to Social Security to increase labor force participation 

in a way that increases the amount of income that people head into 

retirement with, outside of Social Security. We have a number of 

ways in which the current system is now designed, basically because it was drawn up in 1935, to drive people out of the workforce. Back then, we were trying to move people out of the workforce. We were trying to move seniors out, we were trying to move 

housewives out to make room for younger workers. Typical senior, 

if they extend their working career by a year, they are going to get 

a negative 50 percent return on any additional payroll taxes they 

pay. A typical secondary household earner, usually a woman, gets 

a negative 33 percent return relative to what she would have gotten by simply staying home and collecting benefits as a nonworking 

spouse. These are terrible work incentives, and they undermine 

people’s income security in retirement. 

Mr. LANKFORD. So do you have specific proposals that you have 

put out there and just to give you a chance to think in the academic world? 

Mr. BLAHOUS. I have. Yes, I mean, I think there is a lot of things 

we could do. We could give seniors some relief from the payroll tax 

when they reach eligibility age, specifically the disability tax because they are not even eligible for disability benefits anymore. We 

could change the benefit formula. Right now, the way the benefit 

formula works, it only keeps track of your top 35 years of earnings. 

So once you get to year 35 and beyond, chances are, if you take a 

part-time job and transition to your retirement, the system may 

not even see that income, and you will get no additional benefits 

for that tax revenue. You could change that benefit formula so it 

recognizes all your earnings, years of work. I personally would increase the reward for delayed retirement and increase the penalty 

for early retirement. I think you could offer the delayed-retirement 

credit as a lump sum, which people tend to respond a bit more 

than to a small adjustment in their monthly benefit stream. There 

is a whole bunch of things like this we could do to repair the Social 

Security System. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Any other comments on that? Does anybody want 

to add to it? 

Dr. VAN DE WATER Yes, I agree with some of Chuck’s suggestions 

with regard to increasing incentives for work, but your question 

was, what about Social Security and encouraging additional savings and other private provisions? And all I would note is that I 

think the system already does that in two major respects. First of 

all, because the benefits are modest, averaging, as I said, only 

about $1,200 a month and at maximum only about $2,000 a year, 
67 

I think anyone looking at those numbers would say, if at all possible, I would like to have additional savings. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Right. But the perception is, people are not looking at those numbers. They are assuming, when I get to retirement, it is going to be there. Then they get it and find out, Oh, 

it is not the numbers that I thought it would be. 

Dr. VAN DE WATER Well that is part of the issue of being informed. And then secondly, because Social Security is not meanstested aside from the taxation of benefits, that also provides a 

strong incentive to supplement it through private savings and pensions. 

Mr. LANKFORD. Okay, thank you. Mr. Woodall, I am going to recognize you at this time as well and yield back 34 seconds. Any 

other questions at this point? There are no other questions in it, 

then thank you very much for coming. I appreciate your time and 

giving up one more moment to be able to come and be before this 

hearing time. This hearing is adjourned. 

[The prepared statement of Allyson Y. Schwartz follows:] 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. ALLYSON Y. SCHWARTZ, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA

I was deeply disappointed at an incident that occurred during last week’s budget 

hearing, in which a colleague of mine, not only attributed false statements to me, 

but also breached the basic rules of the House; decorum and civility. 

The Gentleman from Indiana was wrong in attributing to me a statement that 

I never made. I would like to take this time to set the record straight and be perfectly clear about how we got here: 

Medicare Part D created in 2003 by Republicans: WAS NOT PAID FOR. 

The two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan: WERE NOT PAID FOR. 

The 01’ and 03’ tax cuts for the rich: WERE NOT PAID FOR. 

Taken together, these policies account for 40 percent of the fiscal problem. 

Just two policies, enacted by the last Administration—the tax cuts and the two 

wars accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for almost $7 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019, including the debt-service costs. 

Furthermore, had President Bush not cut taxes while simultaneously fighting two 

wars and adopting other programs without paying for them, the current deficit 

would be only 4.7 percent of GDP, not 11.2 percent. This is despite the weak economy and the costly efforts taken to restore it. 

The reason I give this historical perspective on how we got here, is to paint clear 

picture for the next decade. If we do not look to history, we are doomed to repeat 

it. 

[Submission for the record by Bill Pascrell, Jr., follows:] 

QUESTION FOR THE RECORD SUBMITTED BY HON. BILL PASCRELL, JR., A

REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

QUESTION FOR MR. VAN DE WATER

Some of our witnesses today believe the best way to reform Medicare would be 

to privatize the program. Our Chairman also supports this idea through his Roadmap to make Medicare a voucher program. Aside from the confusion privatization 

would create for seniors and the shift of financial risk to them, I want to make a 

point about the cost growth under Medicare versus the private sector. 

According to the Standard and Poor’s Index on Healthcare, in 2010, health costs 

covered by private insurance rose by 7.75 percent compared to Medicare, which increased at a modest 3.3 percent. Clearly, Medicare as it is currently structured controls costs better than private insurers. 

Recognizing this, if we are talking today about controlling costs for our budget, 

I don’t see the sense in moving seniors from a lower cost insurance provider to a 

higher cost insurance provider, do you? 

Do you agree with me that with the new tools included in health care reform, 

Medicare can both honor its reputation of offering reliable health coverage while 

also improving its ability to contain costs? 
68 

Then wouldn’t make more sense to adjust a system that we know works, rather 

than abandon it and shift seniors to a system that has greater administrative costs 

and general cost growth? 

[Whereupon, at 1:06 p.m., the committee adjourned subject to the 

call of the Chair] 

Æ