Obama’s central planners are latching on to what they think is a rare ObamaCare “win.” Harvard professor and ObamaCare guru, David Cutler (The health-care law’s success story: Slowing down medical costs) proclaims that ObamaCare has “bent the health care cost curve down” as a consequence of measures already in effect, such as “value based reimbursements” and “Accountable Care Organizations.” ObamaCare has thus attained one of its main goals before it even begins. Quite an accomplishment, I must say, if true.
Note that Cutler rules out that the downward
bending cost curve is a result of the 2008-9 world recession and the
spindly recovery thereafter. As he writes:
“Even as coverage efforts are sputtering, success
on the cost front is becoming more noticeable. 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. [Wrong.
The slowdown began during the recession]. Three years later, the
economy is growing, and costs [No. He means the growth rate of costs]
show no sign of rising. Something deeper is at work.”
Sounds too good to be true. With some minor
jiggling, Obama’s central planners have somehow slowed the rise in
health care costs for the first time in forty years. Per Cutler: “The
Affordable Care Act is a key to the underlying change.”
Cutler fails to mention the world-wide phenomenon
of slowing healthcare costs caused by the world recession and the weak
recovery in its aftermath. The U.S. medical cost slowdown has nothing to
do with the ObamaCare tweaks that Cutler praises. Cutler would have us
believe that the somnambulant world economy explains the deceleration of
medical costs in all countries except the United States, where
ObamaCare must be credited. Try selling that one on the streets.
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