Most important political news this week: New report kills GOP’s radical agenda
Christie and the bridge is big. But Obamacare driving down healthcare inflation is even bigger. Here's why
Topics:
Obamacare,
Affordable Care Act,
Medicare,
Medicaid,
Paul Ryan,
Barack Obama,
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Paul Ryan (Credit: Reuters/Gary Cameron)
The
furthest-reaching political news of the week has nothing to do with who
clogged the George Washington Bridge or what Robert Gates thinks of
Barack Obama’s completely justifiable skepticism of David Petraeus and
the war in Afghanistan.
It came in a seemingly boring actuarial report from a government agency most people probably have never of, showing that for the first time since the 1990s, total U.S. healthcare spending grew at a slower rate than the U.S. economy at the beginning of the current decade.
This sounds like the kind of thing only wonks and other nerds care about, which is probably why it didn’t become a #hashtag meme on Twitter or whatever, but the implications of the great healthcare spending slowdown are vast, and have thus reignited a long-simmering academic and ideological debate over whether, and to what extent, Obamacare deserves credit.
I’ll get to the politics in a minute. But the boiled-down version of the debate is as follows. Healthcare inflation began slowing shortly before Obamacare became law, and has decelerated further since then. It’s certainly possible that this correlation is strictly coincidental — that the slowdown is entirely secular, or so overwhelmingly a symptom of the Great Recession that it will reverse itself when economic recovery is at hand.
But there’s a decent chance that Obamacare has contributed to the slowdown, and prominent health economists — including ones who don’t have dogs in the fight — are engaged in a lively effort to settle this very question. Opinion journalists and political partisans are engaged in a similar debate, although for very different reasons.
To Slate’s Matt Yglesias, the answer to the Obamacare question isn’t nearly as important as the fact of the slowdown itself. The slowdown has already reduced spending projections and suggests the ACA’s coverage expansion won’t swallow the budget, and so it really doesn’t matter who pockets the credit.
“The point is that one major concern people had about Obama’s coverage expansion is that it would exacerbate an unsustainable healthcare spending explosion. Had that proved to be the case, it would have been a huge problem for the coverage expansion. But in fact, spending growth is slowing. So the problem doesn’t exist. I think the ‘coincidence theory’ strains credulity but even if it’s true, the win is there anyway.”
It came in a seemingly boring actuarial report from a government agency most people probably have never of, showing that for the first time since the 1990s, total U.S. healthcare spending grew at a slower rate than the U.S. economy at the beginning of the current decade.
This sounds like the kind of thing only wonks and other nerds care about, which is probably why it didn’t become a #hashtag meme on Twitter or whatever, but the implications of the great healthcare spending slowdown are vast, and have thus reignited a long-simmering academic and ideological debate over whether, and to what extent, Obamacare deserves credit.
I’ll get to the politics in a minute. But the boiled-down version of the debate is as follows. Healthcare inflation began slowing shortly before Obamacare became law, and has decelerated further since then. It’s certainly possible that this correlation is strictly coincidental — that the slowdown is entirely secular, or so overwhelmingly a symptom of the Great Recession that it will reverse itself when economic recovery is at hand.
But there’s a decent chance that Obamacare has contributed to the slowdown, and prominent health economists — including ones who don’t have dogs in the fight — are engaged in a lively effort to settle this very question. Opinion journalists and political partisans are engaged in a similar debate, although for very different reasons.
To Slate’s Matt Yglesias, the answer to the Obamacare question isn’t nearly as important as the fact of the slowdown itself. The slowdown has already reduced spending projections and suggests the ACA’s coverage expansion won’t swallow the budget, and so it really doesn’t matter who pockets the credit.
“The point is that one major concern people had about Obama’s coverage expansion is that it would exacerbate an unsustainable healthcare spending explosion. Had that proved to be the case, it would have been a huge problem for the coverage expansion. But in fact, spending growth is slowing. So the problem doesn’t exist. I think the ‘coincidence theory’ strains credulity but even if it’s true, the win is there anyway.”
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Brian Beutler is Salon's political writer. Email him at bbeutler@salon.com and follow him on Twitter at @brianbeutler.
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