CMS – “In the 2012 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds, the Board warns that “Medicare’s actual future costs are highly uncertain and are likely to exceed those shown by the current-law projections.” The Trustees Report is necessarily based on current law; as a result of questions regarding the operations of certain Medicare provisions, however, the projections shown in the report under current law are clearly unrealistic with respect to physician expenditures and, in addition, may well understate expenditures for most other categories of health care providers. The purpose of this memorandum is to present a set of Medicare projections under hypothetical alternatives to these provisions to help illustrate and quantify the potential magnitude of the cost understatement under current law.”