The nation's health spending will bump up next year as the Affordable Care Act expands insurance coverage to more Americans, and then will grow by an average of 6.2 percent a year over the next decade, according to projections by government actuaries.
That estimate is lower than the typical annual increases before the recession hit. Still, the actuaries forecast that in a decade the health care segment of the nation's economy will be larger than it is today, amounting to a fifth of the gross domestic product in 2022.
They attributed that to the rising number of baby boomers moving into Medicare and the expectation that the economy will improve, according to a study published online in the journal Health Affairs.
The actuaries were not persuaded that cost-cutting experiments in the health law will have an impact. Neither were they convinced that new insurer procedures that change the way doctors, hospitals and others provide services will help. They assumed "modest" savings from those changes from the law.
"It's a little early to tell how substantial those savings will be in the longer term," Gigi Cuckler, an actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and lead author of the report, told reporters Wednesday.
Still, the Obama administration enthusiastically greeted the report. "We are on the right track to controlling health care costs, thanks in part to the Affordable Care Act," CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner said in a statement. "More Americans will have the ability to get the health care they need, and that is a good thing. We have identified several areas where our reforms to control costs are making progress and we must build on those efforts in the years ahead."
But not everyone agrees. "I think it's quite clear from the study that the notion that the health care law fundamentally bends costs is just totally unsupported by facts," James Capretta, a budget adviser to President George W. Bush, said in an interview. "Something more fundamental needs to be done to slow costs than what is in the health law."
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