Fueling the Health-Cost Fire

“Actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported today in Health Affairs that overall health spending will constitute 20 percent of the economy by 2019, up from 17 percent now. An Associated Press article about the report says that ‘factoring in the law, Americans will spend an average of $13,652 per person a year on health care in 2019. . . . Without the law, the corresponding number would be $13,387. That works out to $265 more with the overhaul.’That hardly ‘bends the cost curve down,’ as Mr. Obama and his allies in Congress repeatedly promised the law would do. And it does not take the burden of rising health-care costs off the backs of struggling consumers or businesses — again, as they promised.”