HHS Secretary Tom Price: CBO Score On Health Care Bill Is 'Wrong Again'

[politicat]

16. One of the reasons Medicare costs were off on the 1975 estimate vs 2000 was technology.

We learned how to treat cancer, use computers for diagnostic imaging, implant reliable pacemakers, run effective stents and shunts, replace valves, transplant one liver into multiple people, cure Hep C, replace knees and hips with titanium, mitigate MS, ALS and rheumatic arthritis, and manage hundreds of conditions with medication. In 1975, those were almost all quickly fatal, and thus not too expensive.

That's what skewed that old CBO estimate that these chowderheads keep pulling out. The 1980 to 2005 estimate is also bad, as is the 1985 to 2010. By 1990, the numbers fall into line, because the CBO recognized that technology would change everything.