Report: Rise in health care spending - since passage of ACA - lowest on record

[TomCADem]

1. TPM - "3 Signs That Obamacare Is Slowing Health Care Spending"

The MSM is stuck in its Koch funded narrative of repeating the same canned story over and over along with a file photo of President Obama frowning. I should have went into journalism, because cutting and pasting without attribution to Frank Lutz seems fairly easy.

The three years since the Affordable Care Act passed -- 2011, 2012 and 2013 -- have seen the slowest growth in health care spending since 1965, when the statistic began being consistently tracked, according to a new White House report.

That's great news, but the source of that trend is important. For the last couple years, most experts have credited the Great Recession for much of the decline. It makes sense: When times are tough, people are going to do what they can to minimize spending on everything, including health care.

But the second goal of Obamacare, beyond expanding health coverage to the uninsured, was getting health care costs under control. Health care spending had grown by an average annual rate of 3.9 percent between 2000 and 2007, before dipping to 1.8 percent between 2007 and 2010. According to the new report, the average annual rate of growth from 2011 to 2013 dropped still further, to 1.3 percent.

At some point, the White House needs to prove that the law is achieving that objective. According to the report released Wednesday, they think they have the evidence to say it's starting to. Jason Furman, chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors, explained why in a briefing with a small group of reporters.