UPDATE: I'm sure the ACA had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this. Nothing at all.

Full Disclosure: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has long-term paid banner ads at ACASignups.net.

Having said that, I don't think anyone would disagree that the RWJF is a pretty reliable source for this sort of national healthcare data analysis:

The Widespread Slowdown in Health Spending Growth Implications for Future Spending Projections and the Cost of the Affordable Care Act

The United States is on track to spend $2.6 trillion less on health care between 2014 and 2019, compared to initial projections made right after the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

The Issue 

The report uses health expenditure data produced by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and consistently adjusts in each year for the absence of the sustainable growth rate system for physician payment rates in Medicare.

Key Findings

The United States could spend $2.6 trillion less on health care between 2014 and 2019. The authors note that despite signs of spiking health spending in 2014, there is evidence thatspending growth has slowed down again.

Conclusion

The authors identify several possible causes in the projected drop in national health spending, including the effects of the Supreme Court’s ACA decisions and sequestration in the Budget Control Act of 2011, as well as the recession and the subsequent sluggish economic recovery.

I'm kind of swamped, so I'm gonna leave it at that, but read the full report. Fascinating stuff.

UPDATE: OK, while I’m at it, I should probably also make sure to throw a bit of cold water on the fire as well.

While overall healthcare costs are indeed increasing at a much slower RATE than previously expected, they’re still increasing faster than inflation/etc.

In addition, the total healthcare market includes a lot of different areas/divisions...which means that costs could go down in one area while going up in another.

I say all this because, as anyone who’s been following me over at ACASignups.net knows, my Big Summer Project right now is tracking and analyzing the 2017 Rate Change Filings for every single carrier in every single state for the individual market.

This has been a tremendous amount of work, but the bottom line is this:

I’ve analyzed the rate filings for 33 states + DC. The weighted average requested rate increases so far range from as low as 3.6% in Rhode Island to as high as 56% in Tennessee. The weighted average requested rate increase nationally is around 21.8% so far.

Remember, these are averages only, weighted by carrier market share, metal level and so forth. They also include both on exchange and off-exchange policies (ie, the entire ACA-compliant individual market).

Finally, remember that these are requested rate changes only; they still have to be reviewed and approved by the state regulators. In many cases, the regulators will slice the rates down a bit (or even a lot).

As a result, overall I expect the final, average approved rate hikes to be somewhere around 17-18%, which is admittedly ugly but not fatal...as long as they don’t continue to shoot up at that rate every year.

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Charles Gaba’s ActBlue Page

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