Is Obamacare Accelerating Health Cost Growth?
The Health Care Cost Institute yesterday released its annual report on the rate of health expenditure inflation, and the news was not good – not only are costs rising, they are rising at a faster rate than in prior years. As the Washington Post reports:
Spending for private health insurance surged by 4.6 percent in 2011…That growth rate is faster than the rest of the economy and higher than the previous year, which had 3.8 percent growth. Average spending on a private insurance patient rose to $4,547 in 2011, compared with $4,349 in 2010. That statistic suggests that a recent downturn in health-care spending may have been a temporary product of the recession rather than a more permanent change, as some health-care economists have hoped.
As a reminder, candidate Obama said repeatedly his health plan would CUT premiums by an average of $2,500 per family – meaning premiums would go DOWN, not merely just “go up by less than projected.” The campaign also promised that that those reductions would occur within Obama’s first term. But as the below graph shows, while candidate Obama promised premiums would fall by $2,500 on average, premiums have risen by $3,065 since Barack Obama was elected President.
Regardless of whether or not Obamacare was the cause of the acceleration in health costs in 2011, the news once again illustrates how the 2700-page law has failed to live up to Barack Obama’s promise to lower costs for struggling American families.
