Health Care Reform: What Happened to Cost Controls?

Congress is quietly watering down provisions in health care legislation that were supposed to control medical costs

Ian Hooton / Getty

Pretty much everyone agrees that the health care legislation now making its way through both houses of Congress would do some things well. It would cover almost all of the roughly 33 million legal residents of this country who now lack health insurance. And a vast expansion of Medicaid, coupled with billions of dollars in subsidies to help low- and middle-income Americans buy insurance, would help ensure that most people end up spending less on their health bills, according to a new analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Congress's independent scorekeepers.

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