Surprise-Obamacare Now Projected To Cost Hundreds Of Billions Less Than Expected
12/03/2013 @ 9:52AM |5,399 views
Surprise-Obamacare Now Projected To Cost Hundreds Of Billions Less Than Expected
Amidst the dark skies of the Healthcare.gov launch, some daylight may finally be emerging with respect to one of the critical goals of the Affordable Care Act—bending the cost curve of America’s expensive healthcare system.
According to a New York Times report out Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office has quietly removed hundreds of billions of dollars from the projected costs of Obamacare, primarily the result of an anticipated decrease in the federal government’s contribution to the Medicaid expansion program along with the projected cost of the subsidy payments to those buying private insurance policies on the healthcare exchanges.
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While most economists believe that the lion’s share of the reduction is due to the sluggish economy—making Americans far more careful when it comes to making decisions regarding when or if to spend money on medical care—others believe that some of the plans built into the ACA designed to get people to spend less may actually be working.
Among Obamacare inventions that do appear to be paying off in lower healthcare costs is the government’s refusal to pay hospitals more when patients are re-admitted within 30 days of their initial discharge. Additionally, new plan designs engineered to reward providers for quality of care rather than for quantity of care may well be paying off in terms of lowering the overall cost of care.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation—widely regarded as an honest, non-partisan broker when it comes to healthcare issues and analysis—the declining increases in the cost of healthcare is 75 percent the result of economic factors and 25 percent a benefit of the cost cutting measures in the ACA that do, in fact, appear to be working.
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2013/12/03/surprise-obamacare-now-projected-to-cost-hundreds-of-billions-less-than-projected/
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And that's a big part, unfortunately.
But we'll "save" even more if the SCOTUS rules out subsidies for people who use the national exchange instead of the state ones.
I'd like to know how big; apparently economic factors also are involved, as are some of the aspects of Obamacare that have already taken hold, like holding hospitals more accountable, etc. 
