KFF released a brief by Drew Altman, the President and CEO of KFF, on the projections made by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Chief Actuary of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).  The brief compares the two projections and explains the assumptions each makes and why they reach different conclusions.

From the report: Unlike the CBO, however, the CMS Actuary does not include estimates of revenues, and thus he reaches no conclusion about the impact on the deficit. Conversely, the CBO does not estimate the effect on national health spending. In other words, the CBO and the Actuary do not estimate the same things. Essentially, when you put the two analyses together, they are saying that the law covers 32-34 million additional people, and it does so with essentially the same amount we would spend anyway as a nation and in the federal budget, after taking into account its revenue and cost saving measures.

Full report: http://www.kff.org/pullingittogether/050510_altman.cfm

Kaiser Family Foundation.  (2010).  Predicting the future.  Altman, D.