Four decades of empirical evidence have shown that the costs of government-run health care have risen far more than the costs of privately purchased care, suggesting that American health costs will likely accelerate if ObamaCare goes into effect. Since 1970, Medicare’s costs have risen 34% more, per patient, than the combined costs of all health care in America apart from Medicare and Medicaid. This is true despite very generous treatment of Medicare, such as counting the Medicare prescription drug program as part of privately purchased care, counting health care purchased privately by Medicare beneficiaries (including Medicare copayments and Medigap insurance) among the costs of private care, and not adjusting for significant cost-shifting from Medicare to private entities.
As health care becomes politicized — with basic economic principles being denied — the Obama administration considers coercing states to issue price-controls on health insurers, by threatening to withhold tax revenue to states if they don’t. This would effectively leave private insurers with only two options: ration care, or go out of business.
“Physician Hospitals of America — an organization based in Sioux Falls, S.D.– said the reform law will ‘virtually destroy’ more than 60 hospitals that were under development and leaves few prospects for the future of the industry. ‘Patients across the country should be outraged that, at a time when the government is supposedly attempting to increase access to care, it has chosen to stop the growth of many of the best hospitals in the country,’ said Molly Sandvig, PHA’s executive director.”
The history of federal health-care programs shows that costs have surpassed estimates by tremendous margins. The exception has been the Medicare prescription drug program, which has controlled costs by injecting the sort of private competition and choice that ObamaCare would dramatically diminish.
Robert Samuelson writes that, when it comes to selling ObamaCare, the “disconnect between what Obama says and what he’s doing is so glaring that most people could not abide it.”
As the Congressional Budget Office has said, ObamaCare would raise the cost of health insurance — it would raise the average family’s annual premiums by $2,100 in the individual market — but the mainstream press and the Obama administration have responded to this condemning news with a mix of yawns and cheers.
ObamaCare eschews the one proven way to cut health costs — so, while the price of ObamaCare would be higher federal spending, increased deficits, and diminished liberty, what Americans would get in return would be higher health costs and reduced quality of care.
ObamaCare would increase costs, increase deficits, and reduce the quality of health care — and outside of President Obama and other Democrats who are ideologically driven to expand federal power and control, no one wants it.
Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan provides a concise summary of the true costs of Obamacare at the bipartisan health summit, on February 25, 2010.
ObamaCare is even more deplorable than the Senate process that produced it, and every Democratic Senator effectively cast the deciding vote.