Health Spending Has Lowest Rate Increase on Record
Source: U.S. News and World Report
The U.S. is spending more on health care every year, but last year the growth rate in medical spending was the lowest on record, a change government researchers are attributing both to the economy and to various health care policy implementations, including Obamacare.
The Office of the Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services presented the findings at a Health Affairs event Wednesday at the National Press Club in the nation's capital. The increase in spending on health care in 2013 was at 3.6 percent, lower than it has ever been since 1960, when the government began tracking the figure. Total spending on health care increased to $2.9 trillion, or $9,255 per person.
The government researchers found that health care spending slowed by half a percentage point from 2012 to 2013 – a change they attribute to a slower growth in private health insurance and Medicare spending. Slower growth in spending for hospital care, investments in medical structures and equipment, and spending for doctors and clinical care also contributed to the low overall increase, states the Health Affairs report.
Still, the economy played a significant part in the outcomes, which even before reaching the lowest record last year did not grow above 4.1 percent from 2009 to 2013. The low rate of health spending falls in concert with slow overall economic growth since 2009, or what is considered to be the end of the great recession. In fact, that year showed the next-lowest increase in health spending, at 3.8 percent. Since that time, share of gross domestic product on health care has remained at 17.4 percent.
Read more: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/12/03/health-spending-has-lowest-rate-increase-on-record
This should be bigger news, but many corporate news outlets are reporting this simply as Health Spending Increases, which is totally misleading! The passage of the ACA was supposed to start "bending the cost curve," which it has,
= new reply since forum marked as read
Except for the fact that by GOP definition, it is. Their "success" is higher profits for corporations, the only "people" that count in their books.
Health insurance doesn't automatically mean access to care. ACA is doing what it is designed to do - cut total medical costs. But it is doing so by significantly cutting access to medical care for middle income Americans, which accounts for quite a bit of the complaints.
More put off treatment for serious conditions than non-serious
More with private insurance put off treatment in 2014 than 2013
In terms of public policy, this is not a winner, and it's certainly not going to build support for the law. Nor will it cut health care costs long-term - instead it will increase them.
