CMS: ObamaCare Will Make Health Care More Expensive
A new report by the actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services finds that the Affordable Care Act will actually increase — rather than decrease — the nation’s health care spending:
…the health share of GDP is projected to rise from 17.9 percent in 2010 to 19.6 percent by 2021. During this period, the Affordable Care Act is projected to… to add approximately 0.1 percentage point to average annual health spending growth; and to add about $478 billion in cumulative health spending.
And now politicians will simply argue that its not “that big of an increase in spending”. More lies exposed thanks to John Goodman.
Well, glad to see that CMS actuaries managed to find a way to reach the obvious conclusion.
I wouldn’t put it past some future big government administration to attempt serious price controls on medical goods and supplies in the future…….all in an effort to save the failing federal healthcare system (assuming it passes the court).
Kathleen Sebelius said the CMS report was “good news for consumers” and that Obamacare “is helping control health costs.” It’s as if she didn’t read the report.
http://www.healthcare.gov/blog/2012/06/health-spending061212.html
@Brian Williams – Because odds are she didn’t. The more she speaks the more I’m convinced she’s a propaganda parrot for the administration.
I’m with Linda on this. The CMS actuaries saying the Affordable Care Act will increase health care expenditures sort of restates the obvious.
@Lucius Junius Brutus, the post is written by Devon Herrick, not John Goodman.
More important, however, is the message of this post that is largely misleading. Did CMS conclude that Obamacare will increase health spending? You betcha. However, the carefully included ellipses in the post disguise their larger conclusion that the lion share of health spending increases are due to demographic changes and not the implementation of the new law. $478 billion during a nine-year period for a multi trillion-dollar industry is a joke. The true source of the massive growth in spending is the rapid retirement of those all-too-destructive baby boomers.
Though the author doesn’t blatantly mislead in this regard (he at least mentions that Obamacare accounts for only 0.1 percentage point in healthcare spending growth), the inclusion of the “17.9 percent in 2010 to 19.6 percent by 2021” is strikingly disingenuous.
Interesting that the baby boomers are “all-to-destructive” now that they’ve stopped paying taxes, entered retirement, and expect government to live up to its side of the deal. Pretty much echos the ObamaCare approach to the elderly
A $478 billion spending increase over 10 years is not “a joke.” Assuming a population of 300 million, that’s about $1,600 per person, or $160 a year. That’s a lot of money in a country in which people supposedly can’t afford $9 a month for birth control pills at Target.
The Health Affairs article explicitly says that the estimates controlled for Medicare growth due to population aging. But it also says that the estimates assumed a) that Medicare makes a 30.9% payment reduction to physicians and b) that budget sequestration results in a 2% reduction in Medicare payments to everyone from 2013 to 2022.
There might be a joke in that somewhere.
@Ambrose – Ah, thanks for pointing that out. I’ll read more carefully in the future.