72Hardtop wrote:Costs have not been curbed. In fact most people will find out that in most cases ACA will either:
1. Cost more out of pocket
2. Not cover their cost/s
Anecdotes are one thing . . . but the facts are in. The ACA is actually performing better than expected.
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NOVEMBER 2013
From the White House Council of Economic Advisers:
The Affordable Care Act has resulted in significantly reducing the per capita cost of health care.
To be clear, the per capita cost of health care
is rising but the ACA has significantly
reduced the growth in health care costs. That’s different.
Per capita health care costs have been rising at just under 3 percent a year over the last four years,
but that’s
less than half the average annual growth in the preceding eight years.
• Health care spending growth is the lowest on record. According to the most recent
projections, real per capita health care spending has grown at an estimated average
annual rate of just 1.3 percent over the three years since 2010. This is the lowest rate on
record for any three-year period and less than one-third the long-term historical
average stretching back to 1965.
• Health care price inflation is at its lowest rate in 50 years. Recent years have also seen
exceptionally slow growth in the growth of prices in the health care sector, in addition
to total spending. Measured using personal consumption expenditure price indices,
health care inflation is currently running at just 1 percent on a year-over-year basis, the
lowest level since January 1962. (Health care inflation measured using the medical CPI
is at levels not seen since September 1972.)
• Recent slow growth in health care spending has substantially improved the long-term
Federal budget outlook. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has reduced its
projections of future Medicare and Medicaid spending in 2020 by $147 billion (0.6
percent of GDP) since August 2010. This represents about a 10 percent reduction in
projected spending on these programs. These revisions primarily reflect the recent slow
growth in health care spending
• The ACA is contributing to the recent slow growth in health care prices and spending
and is improving quality of care. ACA provisions that reduce Medicare overpayments to
private insurers and medical providers are contributing to the recent slow growth in
health care prices and spending. In addition, ACA reforms that aim to improve the
quality of care are reducing hospital readmission rates and increasing provider
participation in payment models designed to promote high-quality, integrated care.
• New economic research shows that the ACA’s Medicare reforms are likely to reduce
health care spending and improve quality system-wide. Recent research implies that
reforms to Medicare will have “spillover effects” that reduce costs and improve quality
system-wide. In economic terms, this suggests that efforts to reform Medicare’s
payment system are “public goods.”
• Accounting for “spillovers” implies that the ACA’s effect on health care price inflation
may be much larger than previously understood. The direct effect of ACA provisions
that reduce Medicare overpayments to private insurers and medical providers has been
to reduce health care price inflation by an estimated 0.2 percent per year since 2010.
Accounting for the “spillover effects” discussed above raises this estimate to 0.5 percent
per year, which represents a substantial fraction of the recent slowdown.
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NOVEMBER 2014
Healthcare spending in the US grows at slowest rate since 1960
By Elise Viebeck - 12/03/14
U.S. healthcare spending grew 3.6 percent in 2013, the slowest rate on record since 1960, federal health officials reported Wednesday.
The figures represent good news for the Obama administration in its effort to contain the growth of healthcare costs, though experts disagreed on how much the federal healthcare reform law has played a role.
Total medical expenditures in the United States reached $2.9 trillion last year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said in an annual report.
The total share of the economy devoted to health remained largely the same, at 17.4 percent, while health spending per person was $9,255, up from $8,915 in 2012, the report stated.
"This report is another piece of evidence that our efforts to reform the healthcare delivery system are working," said CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner in a statement.
Civil servants who prepared the report said ObamaCare influenced the slowdown but said the economy was the biggest factor.
"The most prominent provisions of the Affordable Care Act were implemented in 2014 and will be discussed in our historical report next year," said Micah Hartman, a statistician in the Office of the Actuary at CMS.
The conflicting emphases highlight a perennial policy debate over the historically low rise in medical spending over the last five years.
Supporters of the Affordable Care Act are eager to tie the trend to the law's reforms, while actuaries say the relationship between economic growth and health spending is a more likely factor.
The White House touted the news as evidence ObamaCare is working.
"The Affordable Care Act has also made a meaningful contribution to recent trends by introducing payment reforms in Medicare and other public programs," wrote Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, in a blog post Wednesday.
"These reforms … are generating significant savings in Medicare and, if recent research results are correct, catalyzing changes in the private sector that are generating additional savings."
Republican leaders on Capitol Hill did not respond to requests for comment.
The slowdown described in the report was apparent across major sectors of the healthcare market. The 3.6 percent rate of growth represents a deceleration since last year, when health spending rose 4.1 percent.
Experts pointed to slower growth in spending for Medicare and private health insurance as the most important reasons for the trend. Health insurance premium growth slowed from 4 percent in 2012 to 2.8 percent last year, while Medicare spending rose 3.4 percent, compared with 4 percent.
Other sectors saw their rates of spending increase, exerting upward pressure on the total numbers.
In Medicaid, expenditures rose 6.1 percent, to $449.4 billion or 15 percent of total health spending. The total cost of retail prescription drugs also rose 2.5 percent, the report stated.
The figures were published Wednesday afternoon in the online version of the journal Health Affairs.