CMS “News”: Decreases in WHOSE health care costs?

One of the confuse’em methods of justifying Obamacare is the constant reporting of lowering health care costs, or the slowing of health care cost increases. But the question for consumers is whose health care costs are lower? It’s not ours.

The Affordable Care Act is designed to save the Federal government money, not consumers. That’s why we see that the most dominant theme of health insurance coverage change is getting consumers to INDIVIDUALLY PARTICIPATE (pay more) of what is charged for medical care. We see this from the individual mandate to the increases in costs required for coinsurance (that’s the percentage you pay for various services) to co-payments to higher deductibles.

Yet still we see Obamacare fans try to remind us that the “savings” are starting to show. When you consider every chart, stat and prediction of lower costs ask: LOWER COSTS FOR WHOM?

For instance, on September 3, 2014, CMS.gov (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) through public employee Marilyn Tanner (CMS Administrators) self-congratulates saying: “Health care costs are increasing at a slower rate thanks to the Affordable Care Act.”

Whose costs would those be? Not yours or mine. The report is discussing national spending. OK, so let’s say you’re thinking that if money is saved on spending on entitlement health care (which is really what we’re referring to), then that saves “taxpayer” money. And let’s say you’re comfortable with letting the vets, the poor and older Americans face those cost/quality/coverage cuts that made these savings possible, does that mean Obamacare is working? Not likely.

The article (which you can read at http://www.cms.gov/Newsroom/MediaReleaseDatabase/Press-releases/2014-Press-releases-items/2014-09-03.html,) entitled “Press release: Number of Uninsured Projected to Decrease, Faster Health Expenditure Growth Expected as Coverage Expands and the Economy Improves, CMS Actuary Reports,” also indicates that while keeping costs increases below four percent for now (the “sales” period as I see it), “National health expenditures (NHE) are projected to grow at an average rate of 5.7 percent for 2013 through 2023, about 1.1 percentage points faster than the expected average annual growth rate for the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).”

The report continues, “Average annual growth of 6.0 percent per year is projected for 2015 through 2023, largely as a result of the continued implementation of the Affordable Care Act coverage expansions, faster projected economic growth, and the aging of the population.”

You’ll notice that like the Affordable Care Act itself that there is a gaping silence when it comes to COST controls. Yet, without such controls, there is no such thing as a decrease in healthcare costs, those costs charged by providers for health care. It’s not complicated.

There are NO competing reports, surveys or points of view on the point that what we in the US are CHARGED for out medical care is the highest by far among nations (eg “21 graphs that show America’s health-care prices are ludicrous,” 3/26/2013, Ezra Klein, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/03/26/21-graphs-that-show-americas-health-care-prices-are-ludicrous/.)

Without cost controls on what can be charged we are going to continue to see the same old formula, shifting who pays as what we pay goes up and up and up. Free market doesn’t exist in this sphere, there are too many laws that negotiate rates for providers of one sort or another but they tend to be able to charge more as the overall prices keep going up and up and up. That’s why we here about physicians and providers asking for more Medicare bucks, because though that segment of paying for health care has governmental pressures to charge a bit less than the so-called free market in order to participate in the lucrative Medicare industry, those payments go up based on the endless increases in the open market.

When we hear about medical costs going down, it’s nonsense in terms of individual consumers and at best is describing what governments are laying out for medical expenses with most savings coming by asking consumers to pay a larger share of even public insurance (Medicare, Medicaid, VA benefits) and-or by reducing what is covered, the same formula used for consumers.