Report: Health Care Reform Will Actually Cost More

A new government report issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) says they’re not so sure that healthcare reform will slow healthcare spending. In fact, the experts are predicting that spending will increase at an average rate of 6.3 percent which is .2 percent more than spending would have grown if Obama’s plan had not become law.

According to ABC News, nearly one in five US dollars spent in 2019 will go towards healthcare costs. While the report predicts added expenditures, it also points to the fact that more people will be covered under the plan. They predict that roughly 93 percent of Americans will have health insurance in 2019, an additional 32.5 million people compared to current data.

The experts behind the report see the main expenditures of implementing the new health care program to be $38 billion spend on establishing new health insurance exchanges and a $31 billion increase in the cost of Medicaid. While they predict higher spending over the next decade, the researchers did not delve into predictions after 2019.

Even though the healthcare bill hasn’t begun yet, some changes have already started which are increasing expenditures. The creation of a temporary high-risk insurance pool and providing coverage to dependents under the age of 26 are two moves adding $10 billion to national health spending through 2013, according to ABC News. “While the impacts are relatively moderate on net spending, the underlying effects on coverage and financing are more pronounced,” Andrea Sikso, an economist with CMS’ Office of the Actuary and lead author of the study told ABC News reporters Wednesday. “When you peel back the onion, and you look past the surface, you start to see much more pronounced impacts,” John Poisal, deputy director of the National Health Statistics Group at CMS’ Office of the Actuary, and one of the authors of the study, told ABC News.