My response to the NY POST article
This is a special time for this article to come out as there are other recent pertinent articles
1- My response to NY Post article
2- MSNBC on GOP plan to replace Obamacare
3- Forbes article on GOP plan to replace Obamacare
4- Vox article on Health Care Costs
5- 2014 article on whether ACA affects Medicare
From Sarah Kliff's Vox article:
This is a special time for this article to come out as there are other recent pertinent articles
1- My response to NY Post article
2- MSNBC on GOP plan to replace Obamacare
3- Forbes article on GOP plan to replace Obamacare
4- Vox article on Health Care Costs
5- 2014 article on whether ACA affects Medicare
From Sarah Kliff's Vox article:
The US is spending trillions less than expected on health care — and uninsured rates are at an all-time low
Updated by Sarah Kliff on June 21, 2016, 4:30 p.m. ET @sarahkliff sarah@vox.com
The United States is spending trillions — yes, trillions — less on health care than government forecasters expected when Obamacare passed in 2010.
Back then, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services
estimated that the United States would spend $23.7 trillion on health
care between 2014 and 2019.
But the forecasting agency has regularly and repeatedly
revised spending estimates downward over the past six years.
In 2015, it
estimated that health care would cost the United States $2.6 trillion
less over that same five-year period, a new analysis from the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows.
"It’s a pretty significant reduction, and really across
all types of spending," says John Holahan, a fellow at the Urban
Institute and co-author of the new report.
This isn’t to say that the health care law caused health
costs to grow slower than expected. The authors of the report make it
clear that while the Affordable Care Act may have played some role, it
is far from the main contributor.
Rather, the figures show that the Affordable Care Act
hasn’t exploded the federal budget, as critics charge.
Quite the
opposite — health costs have risen modestly as the uninsured rate has
dropped to the lowest level on record.
Medicare alone has cost $455 billion less than expected
One remarkable fact about the lower-than-expected health
costs is that they stretch across the entire health care sector.
Medicare spending has come in lower than expected:
A bit of this has to do with lower-than-expected health insurance enrollment.
Medicaid, for example, has millions fewer enrollees than
CMS initially expected — a product of the Supreme Court making the
program’s expansion optional in 2011.
But this isn’t the case everywhere: Medicare, for
example, is expected to have 700,000 additional enrollees in 2019 for
$96 billion less.
Think about that for a moment: Medicare will be spending less money to cover more people.
This has everything to do with the fact that per-person
costs of health care are dropping.
Forecasters now expect Medicare to
spend $12,527 per person in 2019 — significantly less than their
estimate of $13,990 in 2010.
One reason health spending is lower: Obamacare cut Medicare prices
The health care law significantly reduced certain
Medicare payments.
It also created dozens of new programs that pay
hospitals based on the quality of care they provide, not just the
quantity.
CMS knew all of this when it forecast health spending in
2010.
But it didn’t know how exactly the changes would play out —
whether hospitals, for example, would sign up for the pay-for-value
programs or if they would change the trajectory of health spending.
Much
to health wonks’ frustrations, some forecasting agencies refused to
estimate any savings from these programs.
At the time, they were just
too unknown.
Now there’s at least some evidence that a handful of
these programs are working to reduce costs.
Hospital readmissions, for
example, have fallen sharply since Medicare began penalizing providers
for those unnecessary repeat visits.
Less health spending is good news for budgets — not so much for consumers
Budgeteers will likely cheer the slower health cost
growth.
Less spending on health care means more money for the government
to spend on other things like education or infrastructure.
But for individual consumers, slower health spending
likely doesn’t feel cheaper at all.
In fact, it probably feels more
expensive: One big way private insurers have held down costs is by
asking consumers to pay a larger and larger chunk of their medical
bills.
Deductibles and copays have steadily grown over the past
decade.
Separate research shows that patients use less health care when
they have to pay more.
Sometimes they cut out unnecessary care — but
patients will also skimp on the care they need, too.
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