All government health care has done so far is cause medical insurance to increase in cost!
I hear the rhetoric about increased costs, but I haven't seen the evidence. The Heritage foundation uses a PWC study that says Healthcare increased by 7.5% in 2010 and will increase by 8.5% in 2011, but my math has 7.5% less inflation = 5.86%, which is just .36% more than 2009. The average for last decade (inflation adjusted) is like 5.5% and PWC study for 2011 has us at 8.5% less 2.91% is 5.58% or .08% more than the 10 year average.
I would tend to agree that this is not what I signed up for...I expected that costs and premiums would start to go down, but if you look at the PWC study, you see that the contributing factors don't talk about the healthcare plan, here what they say increased the costs.
Cost shifting from Medicare to private payers and employers is seen as the number one impetus for higher medical costs in 2011. Medicare, which is the single largest payer for hospitals, will reduce payment rates to hospitals in 2011 for the first time after seven years of increases that nearly matched or exceeded inflation increases. Some hospitals that benefited from higher payments in 2008 and 2009 might be able to manage this type of cut by tapping their reserves, but many are likely to shift more costs to commercial payers during their negotiations. (For more on Medicare cost shifting, see the SHRM Online article "Report: Best, Worst U.S. Cities for Hospital Value").
Provider consolidation is increasing, giving providers greater bargaining power. More physicians are getting out of private practice and joining forces with local hospitals or larger physician groups. The number of physicians involved in mergers or acquisitions in 2009 was nearly twice that of 2008, and there has been record consolidation activity in 2010 as wella trend that PwC expects to accelerate further in 2011. With less negotiating power, payers expect to face higher prices in the short term, although the benefits of consolidation should create efficiencies that moderate rate increases in the future.
Hospitals will spend billions of dollars on electronic health record (EHR) systems, spurred by stimulus funding that begins in 2011 and Medicare penalties that begin in 2015. While many hospital systems were planning to implement EHRs in the near future, the governments new regulations condensed dramatically the timelines to invest in technology, IT staff, training and process redesign. Health care executives surveyed by PwC said they will make their largest investments to meet the new EHR regulations in 2011. In the long term, EHRs are expected to help control costs.
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