A new government report on medical costs paints a stark picture for President Barack Obama, Even before lawmakers start debating how care is delivered to the American people, the report shows the economy is making the job of reform harder. Health care costs will top $8,000 per person this year, consuming an ever-bigger slice of a shrinking economic pie, says the report by the Department of Health and Human Services, on Tuesday. As the recession cuts into tax receipts, the giant hospital trust fund run by the federal Medicare program for the elderly is running out of cash more rapidly, and could become insolvent as early as 2016, the report said. That's three years sooner than previously forecast. At the same time, the government's already large share of the nation's health care bill will keep growing. Programs such as Medicaid, the federal program that aids low-income people, are expanding to take up some of the slack as more people lose job-based coverage. And baby boomers will soon start reaching 65 and signing up for Medicare. Those trends together mean that taxpayers will be responsible for more than half of the nation's health care bill by 2016 - just seven years from now. “The outlook for health spending during these difficult economic times is laden with formidable challenges,” said the report by statisticians at HHS. It appears in the journal Health Affairs. The health care cost forecast did not take into account recent legislation that expanded medical coverage for children of low income working parents, and added to the government's obligations. The report “accelerates the day of reckoning,” said economist John Palmer of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. “It is bringing home more immediately the problematic dimensions of what we face,” added Palmer, who has served as a trustee overseeing Social Security and Medicare finances. “The picture was bad enough ten years from now, but the fact that everything is accelerating gives greater impetus to be concerned about health reform.” The report found health care costs will average $8,160 this year for every man, woman and child, an increase of $356 per person from last year.
