Here is a little bit of news Fox and your Republicans in Congress won’t tell you. There is a report showing that health care spending has risen by the lowest rate ever recorded. White House officials said Wednesday a continuation of the trend could lead to more jobs and lower-than-expected costs.
Reduced health care costs for employers could lead to 200,000 to 400,000 new jobs per year by the second half of the decade, said Jason Furman, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.
“If just half the recent slowdown in spending can be sustained, health care spending a decade from now will be $1,400 per person lower,” Furman said.
The Council of Economic Advisers report released Wednesday also said health care inflation is the lowest it has been in 50 years.
The Affordable Care Act is, in part, responsible for the lower costs, Furman and other health experts agree, while Republicans say the declining rate of increases comes purely because of the slowed economy.
An economy hobbled by the recession and the economic crisis in 2008 played a role in some of the reduced spending growth, Furman said, but the report cited “structural change” caused, in part, by the law.
The report’s release came as President Obama and his administration struggle with the political fallout associated with the problem-filled opening of the federal health care exchange, the online marketplace where uninsured Americans can shop for and buy insurance. The exchange’s website, HealthCare.gov, opened Oct. 1 and has been hampered by outages and delays, particularly in its first weeks of operation.
The report did not surprise health economists, said Jonathan Gruber, an economist at MIT who worked with Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s and Obama’s health care laws. But it’s “quite striking” that the growth rate continues to be low.
The White House, Gruber said, “obviously has a point they want to push, but I think they’ve got it right. But I think the health economists are still saying, ‘Wait and see.’ You take the news — it’s great news — but we have to wait and see what will happen in the long term.”
