Two Successes For Obamacare In Reducing Health Care Costs

Two stories today show further areas where the Affordable Care Act was successful, with both helping to reduce health care costs. While conservatives claim that Obamacare is a government takeover of health care, it actually expands market choices. In the past it was very common for one insurance company to dominate an area, contributing to high prices. Selling health policies through exchanges, and expanding the market of those having coverage, is leading to more insurance companies which plan to sell insurance. From Kaiser Health News:

The number of health insurance companies offering plans in the marketplaces this fall will increase by 25 percent, giving consumers more choices for coverage, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell announced Tuesday.

When the marketplace enrollment reopens in November, 77 new insurers will be offering coverage in the 44 states for which HHS had data, which includes the 36 states that use the federal marketplace and eight states that run their own, the department reported.

The number of competitors on the marketplaces is considered important because it signifies the vitality of the exchange and can mean increased competition and lower prices for consumers. It also means that insurers see the health law’s online marketplaces or exchanges, as a good business opportunity, senior HHS officials said…

Burwell sought to cast the increase as one of a number of recent announcements suggesting that the 2010 health law has been successful in improving health care options for Americans.  She pointed to figures announced last week that 7.3 million people who signed up for the exchanges and paid their premiums, findings that HHS released Monday that 8 million people enrolled in Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program since the beginning of open enrollment last year, and a 26 percent reduction of uninsured adults.

“I think we need a bit of a course correction in this country when it comes to how we talk about these issues — and it starts with collectively turning down the volume a bit,” she said. “Surely, we’d all agree that the back-and-forth hasn’t been particularly helpful to anyone — least of all the hardworking families who we all want to help.”

She also said that backers of the law “haven’t done a very good job of explaining why middle-class families who already had insurance are better off.” Families are paying less for coverage, Burwell said, and they benefit from knowing they “no longer have to worry about losing their homes or having their hard-earned savings wiped-out by an accident, or unexpected diagnosis.”

The New York Times showed how Accountable Care Organizations which were organized under the Affordable Care Act can save money:

IT may have been the most influential magazine article of the past decade. In June of 2009, the doctor and writer Atul Gawande published a piece in The New Yorker called “The Cost Conundrum,” which examined why the small border city of McAllen, Tex., was the most expensive place for health care in the United States.

The article became mandatory reading in the White House. President Obama convened an Oval Office meeting to discuss its key finding that the high cost of health care in the country was directly tied to a system that rewarded the overuse of care. The president also brought up the article at a meeting with Democratic senators, emphasizing that McAllen represented the problem that needed to be fixed.

Five years later, the situation has changed. Where McAllen once illustrated the problem of American health care, the city is now showing us how the problem can be solved, largely because of the Affordable Care Act that Mr. Obama signed into law in 2010…

One of its provisions created the Medicare Shared Savings Program, which rewards doctors for keeping their patients healthy. Participation in the program requires primary care doctors to create networks, called accountable care organizations, or A.C.O.s, to better coordinate patient care. These networks are reimbursed for delivering high-quality care below a baseline of historical Medicare costs.

In 2012, doctors in McAllen formed the Rio Grande Valley Accountable Care Organization Health Providers, and signed up for this experiment. The early results are in, and they are stunning: From April 2012 to the end of 2013, the Rio Grande Valley A.C.O. saved more than $20 million from its Medicare baseline.

This is just two more ways in which the real world successes for Obamacare show a totally different picture than the right wing media has been portraying.