Health care spending; up, down❓

Are health care costs declining? Has the growth rate slowed? No and yes.

Is the Affordable Care Act responsible for slowing the growth in health care spending? If you listen to the Administration or certain pundits, the answer will be yes. If you ask tough questions and apply some logic not so much.

If you look at the years just after the Clintons launched their health care initiative you will see spending slowed even though nothing happened. If you look at general inflation and health care inflation, you will see a relationship.

So, we still have the recession impact, the Hawthorne effect, and generally low inflation. Health care costs are still rising at nearly double overall inflation, but the numbers do not appear as dramatic as when general inflation was 4% or more.

To some extent we also have the ongoing shifting of costs to patients, mostly by employers, but also by plans on the Obamacare exchanges. The care that Americans may be avoiding is basic more routine care, not hospitalization or major surgery.

What is being avoided today may come back to bite us in the years ahead as will the growing subsidies under Obamacare. According to federal officials, nearly 8 in 10 current enrollees can find coverage for $100 or less a month, with subsidies covering the rest of the cost. This is a cost crisis waiting to happen and it will happen, just like Medicare costs.

How much do you pay for health insurance or Medicare? That $100 a month for an Obamacare plan is less than a third of what a Medicare beneficiary will pay for Part B, Part D and a supplement plan.