President Obama and Vice President Biden applauding as the House passes the health care reform bill,
March 21, 2010.
Sorry, Republicans, the millions of people who've gained access to health insurance—
and healthcare—thanks to Obamacare are not bankrupting the country. And it doesn't look like they will be any time soon. While the millions of new people entering the system have driven healthcare spending up faster in the last year it's no reason to panic,
says the Office of the Actuary, an independent auditor for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That's because this rise in spending is faster than we've seen in the last few years, but still much, much slower than what the country has experienced for decades.
"Although this health spending of 6 percent is faster than what we've seen around the period in the recession, it's still substantially slower than that experienced over the last three decades prior to the recession," Gigi Cuckler, an economist at the Office of the Actuary, said at a briefing with reporters Tuesday.
Overall, the report concludes, the United States will experience "relatively modest projected health spending growth over the next decade ... even during a period when the uninsured population is expected to decline by almost eighteen million."
Modest growth, after the ballooning growth in the previous 30 years, is very good news. Here's the other good news—government intervention through healthcare reform can make a big difference in spending. This review shows a very good place to start the next round of reforms:
New, big-ticket prescription drugs, such as hepatitis C treatments Sovaldi and Harvoni that can cost nearly $100,000 for a full course of treatment, were another major factor in faster spending growth last year, the actuaries report. Spending on prescription medicines increased by 12 percent last year, the highest since 2002.
The pharmaceutical industry was pretty much left off the hook in this round of reform, and they need to be reined in. Because one of the factors helping hold down costs is that there are more and more health insurance plans with high deductibles and other high cost-sharing features meaning that we're picking up more of the tab out of our pockets. Making health insurance and health care truly affordable for everyone means controlling the costs for things like drugs and devices.
Obamacare has proven that even limited reforms can really drive down cost increases. There's no reason to stop reforming now. Just a Republican Congress, well-funded by industry, that's standing in the way.