Report: Rise in health care spending lowest on record

[jtuck004]

6. Good Question...

"There’s plenty of fodder for fact-checkers in Sen. Ted Cruz’s looong attack on Obamacare, and in President Obama’s defense of it. "

Here.

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The Kaiser Family Foundation analyzed the trend and determined that the economy was responsible for 77 percent of the slow growth rate. Plus, the study said, the rate of growth is expected to increase as the economy continues to pick up.

KFF study, April 2013: Based on statistical analysis of 50 years of health spending and economic trends, the study finds that the economy, including factors such as Gross Domestic Product growth and inflation, produces a major but delayed effect on the nation’s health spending. This effect stretches over a period of six years, meaning that the recession that ended in 2009 will continue to dampen health care spending for several more years and that spending will increase gradually as the economy strengthens.

The slower growth also began in 2009, before the law was signed.

In 2011, experts at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services pointed to the economy as the reason for slower growth in spending: “Job losses caused many people to lose employer-sponsored health insurance and, in some cases, to forgo health-care services they could not afford.”
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On the other hand, since the biggest portion of the economy that is strengthening is the amount of assets the wealthy are pocketing, the coming increase may not be that much, since we will be burying the rest of us. And that's cheaper.