Keeping in mind that one of the key promises of health care reform is affordable health care (or affordable health insurance premiums, take your pick). I recently asked the question on an employee benefit professionals blog if the experts felt that costs would be controlled as a result of PPACA. The general consensus was they would not, but one comment I found truly on target.
The current bill will not reduce costs. The true cost controls will not come for some time and they are not in the current legislation. In ten years there will be very few employer sponsored plans left. Most companies will (as the author of the legislation intends) opt to pay the fine of a few thousand dollars instead of spending ten thousand to cover each employee. While this legislation did not create a single payer system, it will eventually create a single payer system. Once the government-run plans are covering the majority of the people in the country, they will be able to implement the rationing, behavior modification laws (such as taxing obesity) and other controls that will bring costs (or at least the rise of costs) down. The bad news is that the benefits professional’s job as we know it will not exist, however most firms will offer supplementary plans so it’s not all gloom and doom for our profession. Many firms will use supplementary plans as an attract and retain tool much the way they did with very rich “Cadillac” plans. A friend of mine in the U.K. calls these supplemental plans “queue jumping” plans which allow people to get better and quicker care than those who are only on the government plan.
All in all the true costs will not go down simply due to the PPACA.
I agree with this assessment although it may take longer than ten years, but not by much. I added the bold to the above comments, but I want you to focus on this scenario and ask yourself, if some form of rationing or tight control on the provision of health care are not in place, how will health care costs be controlled?
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