Politics

The Truth About the GOP Agenda: GOP Claims that Health Reform Is Increasing Health Costs Are FALSE

By Speaker's Press Shop

An editorial in USA Today this morning debunks the GOP talking point repeated this weekend by House Republican Leader John Boehner that the Affordable Care Act will ?bankrupt our country? and should be repealed.

The editorial points out that health insurance reform achieves a remarkable result: bringing insurance coverage to an additional 32.5 million people and ending the worst insurance company abuses, without any significant increase in total health spending.

Indeed, a key graphic in the USA Today editorial points out that, by 2019, the impact of health reform will be to cut health spending per insured person by 9 percent, compared to prior law. Specifically, by 2019, overall health spending per insured person will average $14,720, according to the CMS Actuary, instead of the $16,210 projected before health reform was enacted into law. From the USA TODAY editorial:

For anyone concerned about rising health costs and their effect on the economy, consider this grim new projection: By 2019, the nation’s health care bill will have surged to $4.6 trillion, or nearly 20 cents of every dollar spent in America. That comes to $13,652 per person, up from $8,389 last year.

Outraged that you’ll be paying nearly two-thirds more than you do now? Ready to demand repeal of the reform law passed early this year?

Think again. The estimate, from the actuarial department at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, actually amounts to a kind of tacit endorsement of the measure. That’s because the new law would have virtually no effect on the upward trajectory of health care spending, while bringing insurance coverage to an additional 32.5 million people and ending the worst insurance company abuses.

Put another way, the controversial reform measure has enough cost controls to deliver protections to more Americans for roughly the same money as would have been spent otherwise?

Many Republicans have decided to blame any and all insurance premium increases on what they call ObamaCare, even though premiums have been rising for years. And they see a repeal-the-bill approach as a winner on the campaign trail?But repeal is a non-starter as long as Obama is president and, as the study shows, it would do nothing to change the cost trajectory…

The answer to soaring costs is not to go backward and undo the benefits of health care reform, but to move on to its unfinished business.

Democrats in Congress and President Obama enacted landmark health insurance reforms to make health coverage more affordable for small businesses and families, and protect young adults, the middle class, women, and seniors. Despite the clear benefits of health insurance reform ? Republican leaders are standing with insurance companies and want to repeal the Patient?s Bill of Rights which protects Americans from discrimination when they need it most ? when they get sick or have a pre-existing condition.

Bottom line: Repealing health insurance reform would eliminate key protections for millions of Americans. We won?t go back to a broken, unsustainable health care system. We can?t afford it.

Full post as published by The Gavel on September 13, 2010 (boomark / email).