You have to love this one: Forecasting the Scale of Health Spending’s Climb – NYTimes.com

I have been saying for the last three years not to count on an ongoing slowing of health care costs. The same thing happened during the Clinton reform effort and the same promises were made during the HMO era. Today we have rapidly expanding coverage and demand in addition to a greater number of coverage mandates including “free” health care services. What do you think is going to happen?

WASHINGTON — Standing before a roomful of economists, policy makers and health care experts earlier this month, Amitabh Chandra, director of Health Policy Research at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, closed a presentation about the slowdown in health care spending over the last decade by citing an article in The New York Times.

“Changes in the way doctors and hospitals are paid — how much and by whom — have begun to curb the steady rise of health care costs in the New York region,” the article declared. “Costs are still going up faster than overall inflation, but the annual rate of increase is the lowest in 21 years.”

Then came the punch line. The piece, written by my now-retired colleague Milt Freudenheim, was published in December 1993, when the so-called managed care revolution promised for a few hopeful years to change the way doctors practiced medicine and curb the breakneck rise in health care costs for good.

It is a sobering reminder that the recent improvements could wither away just as they did two decades ago.

via Forecasting the Scale of Health Spending’s Climb – NYTimes.com.