Per beneficiary Medicare cost growth stopped in 2010

[Greenbeard]

For 45 years, Medicare spending per beneficiary grew like clockwork. Then after the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010 it suddenly stopped, and hasn't really grown since. Saving the taxpayers nearly $4 trillion in the intervening thirteen years.

Despite this being "the most important thing that has happened to the federal budget in the last 20 years" and there having been "basically no recent history of the kind of actual budgetary savings similar to what we have seen with the Medicare spending slowdown," it's rarely talked about, making today's writeup in the NYT all the more notable.

A Huge Threat to the U.S. Budget Has Receded. And No One Is Sure Why.

For decades, runaway Medicare spending was the story of the federal budget.

Now, flat Medicare spending might be a bigger one.

Something strange has been happening in this giant federal program. Instead of growing and growing, as it always had before, spending per Medicare beneficiary has nearly leveled off over more than a decade.

Some of the reductions are easy to explain. Congress changed Medicare policy. The biggest such shift came with the Affordable Care Act in 2010, which reduced Medicare’s payments to hospitals and to health insurers that offered private Medicare Advantage plans. Congress also cut Medicare payments as part of a budget deal in 2011.

But most of the savings can’t be attributed to any obvious policy shift. In a recent letter to the Senate Budget Committee, economists at the Congressional Budget Office described the huge reductions in its Medicare forecasts between 2010 and 2020. Most of those reductions came from a category the budget office calls “technical adjustments,” which it uses to describe changes to public health and the practice of medicine itself.

Older Americans appear to be having fewer heart attacks and strokes, the likely result of effective cholesterol and blood pressure medicines that became cheap and widely used in recent years, according to research from Professor Cutler and colleagues. And drug makers and surgeons haven’t developed as many new blockbuster treatments recently — there has been no new Prozac or angioplasty to drive up spending. (Medicare is currently barred by statute from covering the new class of expensive anti-obesity drugs.)

Parts of the health system appear to have become more efficient, as medical providers have been more cautious about adopting new therapies without much evidence, and more care has shifted outside hospitals into cheaper settings.

If Medicare spending had grown the way it had for much of its history, federal spending would have been $3.9 trillion higher since 2011, and deficits would have been more than a quarter larger, according to an Upshot analysis.

Talk about a BFD.

 

[ActionJackson]

As medical costs rise, the money to pay those costs has to come from somewhere. So if costs are lower over here, then they must be higher over there. All I know is that the same the amount of money deducted from my check has, by no means, gone down.

 

[Greenbeard]

As medical costs rise, the money to pay those costs has to come from somewhere. So if costs are lower over here, then they must be higher over there.

Unless the growth in all health care costs slows down, as it did after the ACA passed. Health care costs today are roughly the same share of GDP and per capita personal income as they were in 2010.

 

[ActionJackson]

Unless the growth in all health care costs slows down, as it did after the ACA passed. Health care costs today are roughly the same share of GDP and per capita personal income as they were in 2010.

I spent 3 days in the hospital for pneumonia a couple of years ago. $20,000.00.

 

[Oddball]

Never mind that it still costs well in excess of 12X what it was projected to when set in motion.

Pinkbeard is the biggest pimp for 100% gubmint run medical services the forum has ever seen.

 

[Greenbeard]

I spent 3 days in the hospital for pneumonia a couple of years ago. $20,000.00.

Good to have insurance.

Never mind that it still costs well in excess of 12X what it was projected to when set in motion.

Whoa, pretty imposing imaginary numbers!

 

[ActionJackson]

Good to have insurance.


Whoa, pretty imposing imaginary numbers!

Who can afford insurance after Obamacare was forced down our throats? You know, "you have to pass it to know what's in it" bill.

 

[Greenbeard]

Who can afford insurance after Obamacare was forced down our throats?

At least 92.3% of U.S. residents at last count.

 

[ActionJackson]

At least 92.3% of U.S. residents at last count.

You mean all of those people on the government dole. Free insurance is pretty affordable.

 

[Greenbeard]

You mean all of those people on the government dole. Free insurance is pretty affordable.

92.3% of the population doesn't have government insurance, no. But plenty do, sure. This is a Medicare thread, after all.

 

[ActionJackson]

92.3% of the population doesn't have government insurance, no. But plenty do, sure. This is a Medicare thread, after all.

True ... it really is a disgrace that the working class have to pay for the freeloaders and illegal invaders. Glad we agree.