ICYMI: The Economist looks at the impact of health care reform on health care costs
Posted by The Campaign on March 26, 2010 at 7:27 AM
Today, The Economist published several articles on the now passed health care reform law. As The Economist has done over the past year, it has drawn a lot of attention to the issue of costs and what health care reform means for costs - particularly the impact on America's employers.
These articles all highlight the glaring omission from reform - real cost containment that will keep underlying medical costs under control and make reform sustainable over the long run.
Here are some key excerpts from these articles:
Missed Opportunity -
- "Because the bill does almost nothing to control costs, it was a huge missed opportunity. American business, which anyhow feels unloved by this White House, will suffer the consequences."
(American politics after health reform: Now What?, 03/25/10)
Far too little done to drive down costs -
- "They will also do far too little to rein in the underlying drivers of America's roaring health inflation."
- "Analysis by RAND, an independent think-tank, suggests that the reforms will actually increase America's overall health spending-public plus private-by about 2% by 2020, in comparison with a scenario of no reform (see chart). And that rate of spending was already unsustainable at a time when the baby-boomers are starting to retire in large numbers."
- "If coverage is the new law's strong point, cost control is its weakness."
- "...the new law carves out a ten-year exemption for hospitals-appalling, when one considers that runaway costs and misaligned incentives in hospitals lie at the very heart of the cost problem."
- "Indeed, by adding tens of millions of people to an unreformed and unsustainably expensive health system, this reform makes it all the more urgent to tackle the question of cost."
(Signed, sealed, delivered, 03/25/10)
American public is still concerned it will drive up costs -
(Miracle or monstrosity, 03/25/10)
"Looming disaster for American business" -
- "From Main Street's point of view the Obama administration has done too little to control the costs of this flawed system."
- "The administration has also talked endlessly about 'bending the cost curve downward'...[A]lmost all of the curve-bending measures have been abandoned in the fight to pass the bill."
- "The most reasonable assumption for Main Street is that health-care costs will either continue to grow at the same pace as for the past decade-or accelerate. This is a looming disaster for American business."
(The health-care squeeze, 03/25/10)
