Health Care, Federal Budget | featured news

"It's in areas like health care, education and job training," Packer said. "Programs are closing or are being cut, layoffs are happening. It's not just waiting in line a bit longer at the airport."

"In another attempt to re-fight the battles of the past, one former Bush administration official is wrongly claiming that some of the savings in the Affordable Care Act are 'double-counted' and that the law actually increases the deficit," said Jeanne Lambrew, a deputy assistant to the president for health policy. "This claim is false."

President Obama’s landmark health-care initiative, long touted as a means to control costs, will actually add more than $340 billion to the nation’s budget woes over the next decade, according to a new study by a member of the board that oversees Medicare financing.

A Republican plan for the 2012 budget would cut more than $4 trillion over the next decade, more than even the president s debt commission proposed, with spending caps as well as changes in the Medicare and Medicaid health programs, its principal author said Sunday.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives was expected to vote on Friday to choke off funds to carry out President Barack Obama's healthcare reform law, intensifying a fight with Democrats over budget cuts and burgeoning deficits.

Signaling a fading chance for compromise, a leading Republican negotiator on health care legislation on Saturday criticized Democratic legislative proposals as budget-busters that would reroute Medicare spending and restrict medical choices.