Dear editor have you noticed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act hasn’t performed as expected and predicted by those who supported and voted for it? They promised to slow the annual rise in costs, some even said that annual increases would level off.
Dear editor that hasn’t happened. From 2000 to 2010 health care costs for those with private insurance rose at about an annual rate of 5%. Since the passage of the ACA in 2010 the annual increase has been about 1.5%, the lowest since records have been kept. From 2000 to 2010 Medicare and Medicaid rose at about 5.5% annually. Since the passage of Obamacare they have risen at about zero percent increase annually. How could their predictions have been so off?
These lower increases have reduced overall health care costs for both small and large businesses and some are predicting as many as an additional 400,000 jobs annually in the next few years.
Jonathan Gruber who helped implement Romneycare in Massachusetts, a system that Obamacare was modeled from, described these results as “quite striking” but also was quoted as saying “see if it can do even more.” Due to these results the Congressional Budget Office has recently projected almost 150 billion in additional savings in Medicare and Medicaid costs.
The ACA didn’t receive a single GOP vote in Congress. As the facts of the legislation begins to rise up through the media talking head rants will the GOP pay a price for their opposition at the polls in November possibly losing the House back to the Democrats? If the vote were held today probably not but unfortunately for the GOP there are 10 more months for the facts to rise up through the talking points and I think most voters will know the difference.
-- cross posted letter-to-editor at the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle