Nation’s Health Care Bill Predicted To Double By 2020

 Stanley Feld M.D.,FACP,MACE

Massachusetts has experienced a sixty percent increase in healthcare costs since “Romneycare” was enacted in 2006.  The total cost of medical care in 2005 was $350,100,000. In 2009 the total cost of care had risen to $587,900,000. This represents an annual growth rate of 13.7% per year.

The Medicare Office of the Actuary reported it expects healthcare costs to increase from the $2.6 trillion dollars in 2011 to $4.6 trillion dollars by 2020 under President Obama’s Healthcare Reform Act.

“The Medicare Office of the Actuary estimated that health spending will grow by an average of 5.8 percent a year through 2020, compared to 5.7 percent without the health care overhaul. With that growth, the nation is expected to spend $4.6 trillion on health care in 2020, nearly double the $2.6 trillion spent last year.

I believe the Medicare Office of the Actuary growth rate estimate of healthcare costs is low. Obamacare is about expanding healthcare coverage for the uninsured. It is actually about driving the entire population into a “Public Option” which will be subsidized by the federal government. President Obama’s goal is to have total government control over the healthcare system.

The total rate of growth of healthcare costs will be greater than 5.8% per year. President Obama is not going to be able to decrease costs by insuring at least 30 million more people. Obamacare has done nothing to restrain the healthcare industry’s billing policies. The healthcare industry’s profit will escalate even further as the federal deficit escalates.

President Obama declared that Accountable Care Organizations, Pay4Performance and Electronic Medical Records would reign in costs. I believe this is a pipe dream.  These programs are in the developmental stages and have an excellent chance of failing as the entitlement expands.

President Obama has continued to ignore an important healthcare cost generator.  Defensive medicine generates between $300 billion and $700 billion dollars a year in costs. Tort Reform if done correctly could decrease the cost of defensive medicine to the healthcare system markedly.

“The federal health law, which will expand coverage to 30 million currently uninsured Americans, will have little effect on the nation's rising health spending in the next decade, a government report said today.’

I hope the American people do not let President Obama trick them again with his demagogary. Last week he told us he was going to decrease the federal deficit by 4 trillion dollars in ten years. It is not true because he is going to increase the federal debt by 9 trillion dollars or 4 trillion less than he had planned. Deficit spending continues unabated.

 Everyone has to watch closely. He is bankrupting the country.

 White House Deputy Chief of Staff Nancy-Ann DeParle tells us not to worry. "The bottom line from the report is clear: more Americans will get coverage and save money and health expenditure growth will remain virtually the same,"

She stated that the new programs that administration officials said they hope to implement would change the way Medicare and Medicaid pay doctors and hospitals. (ACOs, Pay4Peformance and EMRs). Doctor’s and hospitals are only part of the problem. A bigger part of the problem is the administrative service providers (healthcare insurance industry) expenses, the cost of government bureaucracy, and the increase in defensive medicine

“Meredith Rosenthal, a health economist at Harvard School of Public Health, said it is difficult to predict what impact the health law will have on slowing national health spending.  "Many of the components of the law that are intended to control costs are still in draft form,"

The key to President Obama’s deception to the American people is to distract Americans from connecting the dots. Fifty per cent of employers will drop employer sponsored insurance programs and pay the penalty. Employees will buy insurance through the state insurance exchanges. States are refusing to participate in the insurance exchanges. The federal government is picking the ball up for the states and will have total control over the insurance exchanges.

Baby Boomers are joining the Medicare roles in increasing numbers by the minute. The cost of Medicare will escalate. Seniors are not going to be able to find physicians who accept Medicare because President Obama is going to decrease reimbursement by thirty percent January 1, 2012.

President Obama believes physicians are the problem. He refuses to believe the reality of the dysfunctional healthcare system. All the stakeholders are the problem. Some stakeholders donate more to his reelection than others. He has a strong record of playing favoritism to those that support him.

Americans are waking up to his tricks. The healthcare system has to be reformed. He has the wrong approach. I hope the electorate does not fall for his charm again. 

The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.