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http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-healthcare-spending-20150728-story.html

Healthcare spending is projected to rise modestly over the next decade

The total amount America spends on healthcare will rise modestly over the next decade, continuing a trend that began during the recession, according to new projections from government economists. ... Spending is projected to grow on average 5.8% annually over the next decade. [...]

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-health-spending-growth-jumped-to-5-5-in-2014-1438114020

U.S. Health-Spending Growth Jumped to 5.5% in 2014
Growth is up from historic lows of under 4% in past five years and pace set to continue over next decade, according to federal actuaries

Growth in national health spending, which had dropped to historic lows in recent years, has snapped back and is set to continue at a faster pace over the next decade, federal actuaries said Tuesday. [...]

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/28/by-2024-health-spending-will-be-nearly-a-fifth-of-the-economy/

By 2024, health spending will be nearly a fifth of the economy

A sharp rise in prescription drug spending, driven largely by a new generation of expensive hepatitis C drugs, helped push the nation's health-care expenditures to $3.1 trillion in 2014 -- the biggest increase since the recession. [...]

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http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/07/28/us/politics/ap-us-health-spending.html

Health Care Spending to Accelerate, US Report Says

The nation's respite from accelerating health care costs appears to be over.

Spending on health care will outpace the nation's overall economic growth over the next decade, the government forecast on Tuesday, underscoring a coming challenge for the next president, not to mention taxpayers, businesses and individual Americans.

A combination of expanded insurance coverage under President Barack Obama's law, an aging population, and rising demand, will be squeezing society's ability to pay.

By 2019, midway through the next president's term, health care spending will be increasing at roughly 6 percent a year, compared to an average annual rise of 4 percent from 2008 through 2013.

The higher rate of increase is still "relatively modest," says the report from the Office of the Actuary in the Health and Human Services Department. The forecast, through 2024, does not foresee a return to pre-recession days of torrid health care inflation, as the government and private employers try to revamp the way they pay hospitals and doctors to emphasize quality over quantity.[...]

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http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/07/27/affordable-care-act-reduces-insurance-rates-according--study/30752047/

Obamacare reduces uninsured rates, improves access to care, study finds

Since the Affordable Care Act took effect, fewer Americans lack health insurance or have trouble getting the care and medicines they need, a study released Tuesday says.

The research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, says the number of Americans who reported being uninsured dropped 7.9 percentage points by the first quarter of this year. Minorities saw the biggest reductions — with uninsured rates among Latinos, for example, dropping by 11.9 percentage points.

"The ACA may be associated with reductions in longstanding disparities in access to health care," says Benjamin Sommers of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who led the study while an adviser to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. [...]

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...The study also found improvements in other measures of health care access — a 3.5 percentage-point drop in those saying they had no personal physician; a 2.4 percentage-point drop in those reporting "no easy access to medicine" and a 5.5 percentage-point drop in those saying they couldn't afford care.

Researchers note that the design of the study makes it impossible to know whether these changes are solely and directly related to the ACA. Although they controlled for factors such as income and state unemployment rates, they acknowledge the economic recovery may have played a part in improvements.

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http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2015/08/03/how-pay-high-out--pocket-costs/30696993/

Obamacare reduces maximum out-of-pocket costs, but not enough for some

Obamacare went a long way toward preventing the insurmountable medical bills that led to a large percentage of U.S. bankruptcies. But for many people, the $6,600 per-person, per-year cap on out-of-pocket costs might as well be $600,000, it's so unlikely they could pay it.

This is a problem many people will never have to worry about. Without a major disease or accident requiring costly specialty drugs or surgery, very few of us will have enough co-payments and cost sharing to total $6,600 in any year, much less every year. Even fewer families will have so many medical bills that their share will reach $13,200, which is the family maximum for plans purchased on Obamacare exchanges.

“It’s like a hole that has to be filled,” says Jose Fernandez, associate professor of economics at the University of Louisville. “The whole idea behind it is to make insurance act like insurance rather than a YMCA membership.” Traditionally, health insurance paid for all sorts of routine care, and the patient just had to chip in with a co-pay, he says. These days, however, patients are being asked to pick up a much bigger chunk of the tab. That happens first through deductibles, which are what you pay before insurance chips in.

Out-of-pocket maximums include deductibles as well as co-pays and co-insurance, but not premiums or cost-sharing when you get care out of network. Maximums for private plans are often lower than $6,600 — sometimes by a lot — they just can't be higher.

[...] People with high out-of-pocket medical expenses should keep track of them, Fernandez says, because you can deduct any out-of-pocket medical expenses that exceed 10% of your adjusted gross income — or 7.5% if you or your spouse is over 65.

That's something the Garcias could do — but only if they had been able to pay the full annual amount of their bills. And at the rate they are going, they will never be able to do that. Next year, they'll hit CJ's $6,350 maximum cost sharing, so that will be added to the amount they owe for his care. Hempstead says that means the family would be better off with a plan for 2016 with lower cost sharing, even if premiums are higher. [...]

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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/04/us/politics/obama-administration-urges-states-to-cut-health-insurers-requests-for-big-rate-increases.html

Obama Administration Urges States to Cut Health Insurers’ Requests for Big Rate Increases

Hoping to avoid another political uproar over the Affordable Care Act, the Obama administration is trying to persuade states to cut back big rate increases requested by many health insurance companies for 2016.

In calling for aggressive regulation of rates, federal officials are setting up a potential clash with insurers. Some carriers said they paid out more in claims than they collected in premiums last year, so they lost money on policies sold in the new public marketplaces. After finding that new customers were sicker than expected, some health plans have sought increases of 10 percent to 40 percent or more.

Administration officials have political and financial reasons for wanting to hold down premiums. Big rate increases could undermine public support for the health care law, provide ammunition to Republican critics of the measure and increase costs for some consumers and the federal government.

Kevin J. Counihan, the chief executive of the federal insurance marketplace, is urging states to consider a range of factors before making their decisions.
[No upper case? The guy is the Chief Executive Officer of Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and is in charge of Obamacare's federal exchanges.]

“Recent claims data show healthier consumers,” Mr. Counihan said in a letter to state insurance commissioners. The federal tax penalty for going without insurance will increase in 2016, he said, and this “should motivate a new segment of uninsured who may not have a high need for health care to enroll for coverage.”

In addition, federal officials said, much of the pent-up demand for health care has been met because consumers who enrolled last year have received treatments they could not obtain when they were uninsured.

Federal officials have also told state regulators that medical inflation will be less than what many insurers assumed in calculating their rates for 2016.

But Scott Keefer, a vice president of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, which requested rate increases averaging about 50 percent for 2016, said his company had not seen an improvement in the health status of new customers.

“Our claims experience has not slowed at all,” Mr. Keefer said. “The trend has gotten a little worse than we expected.”

Like other insurers, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota reported a surge in prescription drug expenses. Two high-cost specialty drugs for rheumatoid arthritis, Enbrel and Humira, account for one-fourth of prescription drug costs in the company’s individual health plans, Mr. Keefer said. Other insurers reported high costs for hepatitis C medications.

State officials said their agencies had been reviewing insurance rates for decades and generally knew local market conditions better than federal officials.

Monica J. Lindeen, a Democrat who is the Montana insurance commissioner and the president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, said the letter from Mr. Counihan was interesting, but “did not point to any new information that would impact how state insurance departments regulate their health insurance markets.”

[...] But administration officials said their arguments had already prevailed in several states, and President Obama, on a recent trip to Tennessee, said the final rates for 2016 would “come in significantly lower than what’s being requested.”
[Tennessee has rate requests for 2016 for a 30%+ average increase and Barry was there early July, long before any rates will even be approved. The 2016 rates will be the first time they've had a full year of actual claim records to base rates on. It's a BS promise from Barry of what will come!]

Moreover, consumers can avoid large rate increases by switching to lower-cost health plans next year, administration officials said. In any event, they said, the federal government pays most of the premium for most people who buy insurance on the exchanges, so consumers will be largely shielded from higher premiums.
[If they do not mind higher out-of-pocket expense.]

[...] In New York, on average, insurers requested a 10.4 percent rate increase in the individual market, and state officials said they had reduced the average increase to 7.1 percent. “We closely analyzed each insurer’s request and cut rates that were excessive or unreasonable,” said Anthony J. Albanese, the acting superintendent of financial services in New York.

But the New York Health Plan Association, a trade group for insurers, criticized the state’s actions.

“The approved rates do not, in many cases, accurately reflect the financial status of plans as indicated in their rate submissions,” said Paul F. Macielak, president of the New York association. “Health plans have suffered financial losses the last two years when the state significantly reduced premium requests. Plans cannot be expected to continue losing money year after year and remain viable.”

The Affordable Care Act established a rate review process that requires insurers to disclose and justify large proposed increases. State officials have the primary responsibility for reviewing rates, except in five states that the Obama administration says do not have “effective rate review programs.”

In those states — Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and Wyoming — federal officials review rates. Several insurers said they had been flooded with questions from officials asking for more data on their claims experience and challenging their forecasts for 2016. [...]

Baldo

Aug 4 2015, 10:01 AM

...Just 30 percent of customers on Obamacare’s exchanges were satisfied with their coverage...