Quote:
Originally Posted by Lamplighter
<snip>Probably the only path to holding down health care costs is now thru Medicare/Medicaid limits,
and I hope the policies dictated within the Obamacare exchanges will eventually do that.
|
This is a very LONG posting, but it seems to be an authoritative summary of the cost-reducing effects of Obamacare.
It includes implications of the initial web-site problems. I have sniped out most of that.
Washington Post
David Cutler
November 8, 2013
The health-care law’s success story: Slowing down medical costs
Quote:
The anger over the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act’s federal health insurance exchange
— and over the conflicting explanations about whether people can keep their coverage —
has been bipartisan and well-deserved.<snip>
The law has two overarching goals: Cover almost everyone, and slow the growth of medical care costs.
The goals are equally important. Too little coverage, and premiums in the exchanges will be unaffordable;
too rapid a cost increase, and the federal government will not be able to afford the subsidies.
Since 2010, the average rate of health-care cost increases has been less than half the average in the prior 40 years.
The first wave of the cost slowdown emerged just after the recession
and was attributed to the economic hangover. Three years later,
the economy is growing, and costs show no sign of rising. Something deeper is at work.
The Affordable Care Act is a key to the underlying change.
Starting in 2010, the ACA lowered the annual increases that Medicare
pays to hospitals, home health agencies and private insurance plans.
Together, these account for 5 percent of the post-2010 cost slowdown.
Medicare payment changes always provoke fears — in this case,
that private plans would flee the program and that the quality of care in hospitals would suffer.
Neither of these fears has materialized, however.
Enrollment in private plans is up since the ACA changes.
The law also emphasized that payments should be based on the value, not the volume, of medical care.
In a value-based system, compensation is made for the patient as a whole, not for specific services provided.
As a result, eliminating services that are not needed is financially rewarded.
The reaction to this change has been rapid:
Hospital readmissions, which used to bring in substantial dollars, are now penalized.
Unsurprisingly, the readmission rate in Medicare is down 10 percent since 2011.
Similarly, hospital-acquired infections used to bring in additional dollars, but now they do not.
One program to cut infections, encompassing only 333 hospitals, saved more than $9 billion.
Both of these changes improve patient health even as they reduce spending.
Cost savings induced by the ACA are particularly beneficial
because they could increase quality while they lower spending.
The reduction in technology development means lower costs
but also fewer ways to treat sick people.
People with high deductibles use fewer valuable services as well as fewer less-valuable ones.
Only by eliminating unnecessary care can we ensure that everyone benefits from saving money in health care.
Governors and legislators in red states are almost universally opposed to the ACA.
But these states are still seeing cost savings from the law — and they are participating in other ways.
|
For those who want to blame Obama for anything and everything that affects them personally,
they should put the blame where it belongs, on the GOP and the GOP Governors
who are fighting tooth and nail to defeat the A.C.A. law for their own political purposes.
So there, I said it