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Obamacare Drives Down Health Care Costs
Tampa Bay Times - Polit-Fact_Check wrote:
"Partly because health care prices have been growing at the slowest rate in nearly 50 years, the growth in what health care costs the government is down," Obama said in a speech about the economy last week at Northwestern University. "Health care has long been the single-biggest driver of America’s future deficits. It’s been the single-biggest driver of our debt. Health care is now the single-biggest factor driving down those deficits."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/18/us/un ... c=twr&_r=0
As predicted health care costs are going down ( actually growing slower than previously predicted ) as a result of Obamacare.
There are interesting, and counter intuitive, reasons for this:
1. The Federal Government ( as part of paying for Obamacare ) Stopped providing $500,000,000,000 ( Half a Trillion ) Dollars in subsidies to Medicare Plus Insurance policies as a result Medicare Patients are seeing more restricted networks of doctors and hospitals and much higher deductibles and co-pays, and,
2. Large Corporate employers are voluntarily switching from their grandfathered traditional employer sponsored health care plans, to Obamacare compliant employer sponsored health care plans, and as a result the employers are seeing a drastic reduction in health care costs paid by the employers, as massively higher deductibles, and diagnostic tests subject to deductibles, have shift a huge portion employee healthcare costs on to the employees, which can simply be blamed on complying with Federal Law ( in this case Obamacare compliance ), and,
3. Obamacare allows employers to drop employees working less that 30 hours a week from health insurance, and again, blame it on federal law ( again the law is Obamacare ), and,
4. The six million people who have moved their private insurance to the Obamacare exchange, either voluntarily, or because their old policies were canceled, have seen their deductibles rise to $5,000 per year, per person covered and expensive diagnostic test that previously were not subject to the deductibles, suddenly are subject to the deductibles, and,
5. People from the working class and Lower Middle class are suddenly finding they can not afford to pay the deductibles associated with the employer based insurance, medicare based medicare plus policies, and exchange based insurance policies mandated ( or allowed ) by Obamacare, and members of the working class, and simply do not go to the doctor, or the hospital unless they are on deaths door, reducing diagnostic tests, reducing trips to the doctor and reducing hospitalization, even when the care was advisable, also reduces health care costs overall, and,
6. Reduced network size for exchange policies, employer sponsored policies, medicare plus policies, and medicaid has resulted in health care rationing, and delays in receiving health care services, and,
7. Increased number of patients in Medicaid programs at the same time the providers networks have stayed the same, or shrank, has resulted in health care rationing, and delays in receiving health care services, and,
8, The so-called death panels do exist, and they have extended the recommended time between diagnostic procedures, for many things, such as extending time between colonoscopies for individuals over fifty from 5 years to 10 years, and,
9. Employers shifting health care costs from corporate tax deductible costs, to employee costs, and also employees avoiding health care costs because they can not afford the health care services even with insurance, has resulted in employers paying higher federal income taxes, which under the Obamacare law are counted as health care savings.