Policy analysts continue to struggle to understand the degree to which health care reform legislation will ‘bend the cost curve.’ Here is an interesting description of some current thinking in the Atlantic Monthly. How successful have we been at controlling costs in the past? A look at the past in various markets raises important questions as policy analysts struggle to answer these questions.
Here is an interesting graph looking at the history of cost controls and their impact on changes in private sector health care spending. And here is a similar measure of Medicare’s ability to control costs (through 1999). What becomes clear when you superimpose the two is that cost control efforts in Medicare may not necessarily translate into the broader private sector. If Medicare represents less than 50% of total spending and most of the efforts to bend the curve are in the Medicare system, we need to ask what the impact on overall spending will be.
They can cut the reimbursmenet rates, but that will cause many doctors accross the U.S. to stop accepting Medicare. We are already having issues with doctors not accepting new Medicare patients.
Posted by: Gerber Medicare supplement | Feb 09, 2010 at 02:24 PM