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Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Go two years without health insurance; then we'll talk


The White House released the above graph on December 16, 2014. It shows about 10 million people have gained health care insurance since the implementation of the ACA; Affordable Care Act or Obama-Care. The above decline of the uninsured has also been reported by several other health care surveys as well.

A dramatic change to such a persistent trend as above is usually explained away by some outside event. In many cases it would be described as an outlier and eliminated from the data set. But, in this case there is an explanation; and that is the introduction of the ACA in 2014.

Obama-Care is highly effective in providing health insurance to those that did not have it before. For those who are trying to repeal the ACA, let me clearly say: It is a huge difference to go from no health insurance to having insurance. The positive effects of having health insurance are obvious, financial security, life longevity and of course better health. 

The folks who favor repealing the ACA have never been without health insurance. How can they possibly understand what it feels like to go without health insurance and then sit in judgement of whether someone else should have health insurance or not? So when these same folks have experienced at least two years without health insurance, as my family did, then we all can meet at our house and discuss whether the ACA should be repealed.

I have posed that challenge above to many ACA bashers, and have yet to see anyone show up at our door ready to discuss the repeal of the ACA.

If you have such opposition to the ACA at least come up with a viable alternative. By the way, any replacement or repeal of the ACA had better sustain the current trend of declining uninsured. But of course there is no discussion of an alternative health care system, only repeal. By offering no alternative plan, their implication is to default back to the era of high numbers of uninsured. Why?
 
Once again our door is open to discuss repealing the ACA.

More Good News from Obama-Care Just Keeps Coming
 
Another benefit of the ACA has been the decline in the growth rate of health care spending, mostly because of the efficiency changes to the health care system. The graph below plots the relationship between what countries spend on health care against the share of that spending that comes from the public sector. The message is that when it comes to health care spending the public sector is much better at cost control.
 
Other advanced contries have quickly learned that government run health care systems are more efficient than the private sector. For example in the U.S. administrative costs alone account for 25% of the health spending, far more than other countries.
The graph below shows that other advanced countries did not reduce health care costs through death panels but through incentivizing quality of health care over quantity. And as we all know that with a for profit, privately run health care system, it is quantity of service first.
The folks pushing to repeal the ACA of course advocate the quantity over quality approach of health care. We have been there, done that.
hthexp_country

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