ALEXANDRIA, Va. — There may never have been a law more misnamed than the Affordable Care Act.
President Obama’s health overhaul law already is driving up health insurance costs for businesses and consumers and will inflict even higher costs on American taxpayers in the years ahead.
Obama repeatedly promised the American people he would cut a typical family’s premium $2,500 a year before the end of his first term.
But costs are rising now even faster than before the law was enacted in March 2010.
A Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that premiums for a family policy topped $15,000 a year in 2011, increasing an average of $1,300 in the last year — three times faster than the year before.
The many more mandates to come from Washington will raise premiums even further. Health insurance is consuming a bigger share of employer budgets, pre-empting pay raises and pushing higher costs onto employees, the Kaiser survey found.
The $500 billion in new taxes in the law will further fuel premiums increases.
A number of factors contribute to rising health costs, but the mandates, taxes and regulations in the health law are accelerating the trend.
The premium increases reflect the law’s early provisions, such as “free” preventive care and adding “children” up to age 26 to their parents’ policies. Consumers may like these features, but they come at a cost, and because they now are in federal law, people can’t opt out.
Analysts at the Congressional Budget Office estimate that the average policy for those who get health insurance through the workplace will cost $20,000 a year for a family of four by the year 2016.
Millions of Americans who buy insurance on their own will pay at least $2,100 a year more for their policies than if the law had not passed, CBO says.
And obtaining health insurance will not be optional since everyone will be required to have coverage or pay a fine.
Former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin estimates that as many as 35 million more people will flood to the subsidized exchanges for health insurance than Congress expected, adding $1 trillion to the $2.6 trillion cost to taxpayers.
One of the tools companies have found valuable in helping them offer affordable coverage — Health Savings Accounts — are at risk of being strangled by obscure and complex regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The lower-cost HSAs would not be able to comply with strict new rules dictating how premium dollars must be allocated.
The chief Medicare actuary has said health spending will actually increase thanks to the Affordable Care Act by at least $311 billion over the decade.
But supporters of the law are pointing to figures released in December showing that per capita spending in Medicare increased only 2 percent in 2011, half the normal rise.
The actuaries, however, attribute the slowing primarily to lower utilization of medical services by seniors, not to provisions in the new law.
With 10,000 Baby Boomers aging into Medicare every day, spending will soon bankrupt Medicare and the federal government unless the program is modernized.
One of the reasons the business community supported passage of the law was because of promises it would finally get health costs under control.
The experience in Massachusetts, which passed legislation in 2006 similar to the national law, shows that costs are continuing to soar, with Massachusetts still facing the highest health costs in the nation.
The rest of the country faces the same threat under the new law. We needed health reform, but the Affordable Care Act tried to do too much too fast and it is backfiring in its goals.
It’s time to head back to the negotiating table and get this right to save consumers, businesses and taxpayers from the law’s calamitous costs.
• Turner is president and founder of the Galen Institute, which is funded in part by the pharmaceutical and medical industries.
Comments (22)
Add commentI see where you are going with that...
This is a most excellent argument for a single payer health care system with a fully nationalized health care system. Its really the only way to hold down costs.
Empire...
Why do you continue to let this partisan hack be the authority on healthcare costs? Sure, I'm all for getting different points of view on a subject, but you've probably published a dozen pieces from her on this subject over the past couple years.
Could you at least find some different partisan hacks to provide your editorials?
As far as her points...she very slyly blurs the definition of healthcare costs and insurance costs. Insurance costs more, but you're getting more services as a result. Healthcare costs are going up at an unsustainable pace, regardless of the Affordable Care Act.
We spend far more per capita, and GDP, than any other country. Any honest person with half a brain can see that we need to change course, and going back to status quo won't do it. These rising costs are as much of a threat to our nation as our national debt. Let's adopt from the most successful programs from around the world - Israel, Australia, Britain, Germany...
Problem is, the industries making big money with the status quo (insurance, pharma, AMA...), are busy bribing our leaders to not change course.
160% increase
According to a report today in the Fairbanks News Minor health care cost in Alaska rose 160 % in the previous 12 years. No matter how you look at that number you can not point to the Obama HC plan as why that increase has taken place. For the growth rate has been almost constant over those 12 years.
Fidelity investments ran a story this past month informing seniors to expect to be paying 30% or more of their retirement income of health care. Health care cost are generally more than housing cost for many Americans.
I keep hearing those opposed to the national health care claim private markets would solve the problem. Yet what I read is report after report about increasing cost for those private market plans.
Should the Obama plan be repealed by our conservative friends I'm sure we will see them banter around the problem for another twenty years and still claim they need to study the issue. Meanwhile HC cost will certainly exceed all but the highest income earners ability to provide for ones family.
ARTCLE
Allon has to do is look at the source of the article The lady is a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry. She Will come out and say anything to make the Health Care plan look bad!!
Big Pharma Speaks
Thanks Empire for the piece by the big Pharma lobbyist. Costs are continuing to increase and Obamacare hasn't even taken effect, so it's Obamacare's fault? What a crazy whopper that is. More like the crappy system we have now is continuing to gouge us becasue they can. Industry's alternative to Obamacare is more of the same, bad service and increasing costs?
A giant mess
Our healthcare is a mess because it became a for profit industry coupled with the fact there are very few safeguards against fraud. I think the big pharmaceuticals are worse than big oil and the tobacco industry. We need reform but Obamacare is not it, having the IRS force people to buy insurance is the screwiest thing I've heard.
Agreed with banditrider and bill
Says right in her bio that her institute is funded by the pharmaceutical industry. And as banditrider implied, big pharmaceuticals are not in the business of helping average Americans; they're in the business to turn profits for shareholders. I understand the value of hearing big pharmacy's perspective, but interpreting it in any way other than a greedy sales pitch is a mistake.
The only way...
...the ACA can work is if everyone's forced to buy insurance. Otherwise no one would buy insurance until they became sick.
So the solution is... scrap it. Make Medicare available to everyone. And fix its flaws. And figure out the best way to fund it.
I would be OK paying higher Medicare taxes if I no longer had to pay for insurance. And most businesses would probably like to get out of the employee health coverage game too, and would pay higher taxes for that benefit. U.S. companies are at a terrible competitive disadvantage providing health benefits to their employees when their foreign competitors aren't saddled with that cost.
O.K. Einsteins, if your goal
O.K. Einsteins, if your goal is to contain health care cost, just nationalize the pharmaceutical companies, & all health care delivery. On the plus sided, cost will be contained. On the negative side, heath care will be delivered with the efficiency of the DMV, coupled with the compassion of the IRS.
And we will be fortunate if the next big evolution drug development will be on the scale of buffering aspirin.
Other than defending the Nation, & stomping on our liberties, there is next to NOTHING the government does well.
O.K. Einsteins, if your goal
O.K. Einsteins, if your goal is to contain health care cost, just nationalize the pharmaceutical companies, & all health care delivery. On the plus sided, cost will be contained. On the negative side, heath care will be delivered with the efficiency of the DMV, coupled with the compassion of the IRS.
And we will be fortunate if the next big evolution drug development will be on the scale of buffering aspirin.
Other than defending the Nation, & stomping on our liberties, there is next to NOTHING the government does well.
Change the headline
This headline would have been more accurate:
"Greedy monopolistic AMA and healthcare industry already sending healthcare costs through the roof for the last 30 years."
A decade ago, I landed in the E.R. for a bad throat infection which led to serious complications. I had no insurance at the time. My Doctor was an intern who wanted a second opinion. A second Doctor comes in and asks, "May I examine you?" I didn't see why not. He looks in my throat, "Throat infection" he says. He then walks out. He was there a total of 45 seconds, tops.
A month later, I got a bill for his examination. $450. That was a decade ago. $450 for less than 60 seconds of work. Greed. I wonder how many people he stiffs per day. I wonder how many other Doctors like him are out there.
I agree with Latitude58. This is the very reason Medicare should be made available to all! I wouldn't mind spending double in healthcare insurance premiums to make it happen. I am tired of healthcare only being available to the elderly, the poor, veterans, Alaska Natives and various and sundry other groups of Americans and not me.
Canada, the U.K. and several european nations have nationalized health care. We can too. But not as long as the healthcare industry has their lobbyists greasing the palms of the republipukes.
Make Medicare available to ALL Americans!
Uh, Jo...
"But not as long as the healthcare industry has their lobbyists greasing the palms of the republipukes."
Hate to break it to you, but they're greasing the palms of everyone in DC. Plenty of dems to blame for the current situation too.
The problem's not the party. Everyone knows that the current system is broken. But they're all getting such sweet, sweet contributions from the industry, and they know that if they don't take the bribes, their opponents will in the next election...and bury them in negative ads.
Now with Citizens United and a flat screen TV on every wall... the party is completely over. The plutocrats have sealed their victory. Brave new world indeed.
Affordable?
I couldn't afford it then and I sure as heck can't afford it now. Fining me for not buying it is going to make me able to afford it? They already have it all. This turnip is bled out.
jj - +1!! But, but jo,
jj - +1!!
But, but jo, weren't those AMA docs in their lab coats lined up behind BO out in the Rose Garden when he was lying about his healthcare bill?
You can't have it both ways - you're either for him or against him...
In reality, what's driving up our healthcare costs is government involvement at all levels. From onerous state and federal mandates for coverage that insurance companies must provide, to Medicaid and Medicare not reimbursing at 100%, to state run medical universities putting quotas on enrollment, to regulations and taxes on pharmaceutical and medical device companies, to no tort reform because the trial lawyers are a powerful lobbying arm, and on and on. There's hardly any free market left in the healthcare industry anymore.
Handing over more control to the government is certainly not the way to decrease costs.
More lies from Frenchie
So tell me, Frenchie, how is it that those other countries are able to deliver high quality healthcare to their citizens for less than half the cost that we do? Their programs are 100% government controlled/delivered.
On second thought, don't bother answering. We all know you're simply full of [filtered word] and will just regurgitate some rightie tightie website's canned response.
Well skirkz...
If you don't have insurance, the first time you need urgent medical treatment, who's going to pay for it?
If you truly can't afford insurance, then you definitely won't be able to pay the hefty medical bill you'll be facing. So then the government will have to bail you out, or you'll just skip out on your debt and the taxpayers/insurance rate payers will eat the expense anyway.
You sure sound like a personal responsibility kinda guy to me. Perhaps you need to go get a better job that provides benefits.
Or you can wait for the ACA to fully kick in, with its voucher system for low income citizens.
Or you can actively campaign for a universal coverage system like every other industrialized country has successfully deployed.
Maybe you're hoping Mitt and Don will solve this for you?
the score
Latitude.........2
Skirz..............0
Who said I didn't have it?
Can't afford heating oil either, but I ain't freezing. Even with coverage, the co-pay can wipe you out with a huge bill? But, the doctors will get paid one way or the other. Of course the government will get their hefty administration fee. And you will still have to pay for the bail out.
Hey 58, if you're going to
Hey 58, if you're going to compare "countries (that) are able to deliver high quality healthcare to their citizens for less than half the cost that we do" you might want to be sure you're comparing apples to apples.
Start with population figures for those countries compared to the U.S., then define "high quality" because I'm thinking American's standards of "high quality" healthcare might be much different than, for example, the European's expectations. Then take a look at the tax rates paid by European or Canadian workers.
And finally explain the economic situation in, say, Europe at present. I'd say that socialism thing isn't working out too well. How long do you think the wait for an MRI is now with all their economic troubles?
Well gee, Frenchie
Why don't you demonstrate that their care isn't high quality, since that's what you're insinuating? I'm sure you can find some rightie tightie website to feed you the canned soundbites that you need. Maybe you should hit up Grace-Marie's website - I'm sure she has everything you need.
I'll go by outcomes such as lifespan, infant mortality, and other basic measures of a population's health.
As far as taxes, that's an independent issue. The health expenses per capita is measured regardless of tax rates.
But you may have a point regarding wait times for services, as this Bloomberg article demonstrates: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_28/b4042072.htm
"As far as taxes, that's an
"As far as taxes, that's an independent issue."
@58 - not really. The more nationalized healthcare costs, the higher taxes or "fees", as the left likes to call them, will have to be. That or the powers that be can start rationing services, which is exactly what happens under socialized medicine.
And if you're using WHO numbers for lifespan and infant mortality, I'm not buying it. Their numbers don't compare apples to apples and you can research that yourself, since you're such a smarty pants.
Why do you hate facts, Frenchie?
"The more nationalized healthcare costs, the higher taxes or "fees", as the left likes to call them, will have to be."
Sure, and the lower that insurance payments will be. And your point is?
Healthcare costs money. It just costs Americans a lot MORE money than it costs anyone else. And we don't necessarily get more for it.
Good thing our healthcare never gets rationed by the government...only by our insurance companies (if you have insurance).