Yes, the growth rate of health care spending [the year PPACA was signed] was well below the historical average. But it was just as much below it in 2009, the year before the act was passed! Health care spending growth in 2010 was exactly the same as it was in 2009. It remained exactly the same in 2011. And again in 2012. Looking only at the numbers, we would have to conclude that nothing that happened in 2010 had any impact whatsoever on health care spending. Nothing Congress did; nothing the president did; nothing that anyone did that year seems to have mattered.
Here is something else [Paul] Krugman [of the New York Times] failed to inform readers about: as the chart clearly shows, the slowdown in the rate of health care inflation has been steady and stretches over almost the entire decade before the Affordable Care Act became law. Whatever the cause, it started early on George Bush’s watch ― not under Barrack Obama.
Moreover, ObamaCare doesn’t really begin until this coming January. All the changes up to now have been cost increasing ― providing risk pool insurance to the uninsurable, forcing private plans to cover more benefits, and adding such extras to Medicare as free “wellness exams.”
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Healthcare Spending Was Dropping Long Before Obamacare Ever Became Law
We've covered this here before. But it is worth repeating:
