Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Teaching UC Berkely the art of division

AEI's Chris Conover claims that, because total national health spending is going to be higher than baseline as a result of the ACA, it is not possible for the premiums paid by those who purchase health insurance to be going down as a result of the ACA. Say what? Right now the premiums of those who buy insurance pay for a lot of the uninsured's medical care. If you broaden the base by insuring more people, you lower the rates that those who are insured and pay for the system pay.Brad Delong

All things being equal, the same amount of medical procedures done to the same group of people, but with a higher cost. The result is the mean insurance payment goes up.  The missing insurance premiums are covered by taxpayers, but they are premiums nonetheless, according to the Supreme court. Right? Did I miss something?
Brad has to talk about medical efficiency, medical results per dollar spent. How is that going up? Brad convinced me to read the AEI report, which says:
The Medicare actuary first issued a report carefully estimating the cost impact of Obamacare on April 22, 2010. Its annual national health expenditure projections reports for 2010, 2011 and 2012 all have contained tabulations showing that Obamacare will increase health spending over the next 10 years compared to a counterfactual scenario in which the law was never enacted.Footnote

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