“Just in time for the next presidential election, health care spending is starting to take off again. Through 2024, health care spending is projected to grow by 5.8% annually, on average, according to CMS. While this isn’t unexpected—health economists across the political spectrum expected health care costs to start growing again (and growth rates are expected to still be lower than the long-run average)—the window for addressing health care costs in a less painful way is closing. Without better cost controls in the private sector, and without immediate reforms to Medicare, the health care sector is set to gobble up a full fifth of the U.S. economy in just 10 years.
So the Obama Administration is going to have to put some corks back into their champagne bottles. Obamacare has not slain the health care cost dragon. Back to the drawing board.”
“Despite media rhetoric about soaring drug prices, absent a one-off jump in drug spending from expensive, life-saving Hepatitis C drugs, drug spending as a share of U.S. health care spending is expected to remain largely flat: from 9.9% in 2014 to 10.4% in 2024.
Less than 1% growth is hardly a cost explosion.
The big drivers of spending growth will, unsurprisingly, will be Medicaid and Medicare. Even as per-capita costs in these programs grow relatively slowly—averaging just around 4% through 2024—greater enrollment in the two programs will drive spending: 7% for Medicare, thanks to a retiring cohort of baby boomers, and around 6 percent for Medicaid, mainly due to the ACA’s Medicaid expansion.” - America's Health Care-Cost Slowdown Goes Kaput, Forbes, 08/22/2015
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2015/08/22/americas-health-care-cost-slowdown-goes-kaput-what-should-republicans-say-and-do-about-it/
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