For more than a decade, the Affordable Care Act has been saving lives. Now we know that it’s also helped save taxpayers trillions of dollars that would have raised the deficit. That’s what change looks like. https://t.co/YfxfimIDAn
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 6, 2023
Super good news here. And another reason the Affordable Care Act is such a success: its wonkiest policies on payment reform generated huge savings https://t.co/AYzYztIQGe
— Neera Tanden?? (@neeratanden) September 5, 2023
Despite the potentially aggravating FTFNYTimes-house-style headline, it’s not a bad article. [Unpaywalled gift link]:
… Something strange has been happening in this giant federal program. Instead of growing and growing, as it always had before, spending per Medicare beneficiary has nearly leveled off over more than a decade.
The trend can be a little hard to see because, as baby boomers have aged, the number of people using Medicare has grown. But it has had enormous consequences for federal spending. Budget news often sounds apocalyptic, but the Medicare trend has been unexpectedly good for federal spending, saving taxpayers a huge amount relative to projections…
Some of the reductions are easy to explain. Congress changed Medicare policy. The biggest such shift came with the Affordable Care Act in 2010, which reduced Medicare’s payments to hospitals and to health insurers that offered private Medicare Advantage plans. Congress also cut Medicare payments as part of a budget deal in 2011.
But most of the savings can’t be attributed to any obvious policy shift. In a recent letter to the Senate Budget Committee, economists at the Congressional Budget Office described the huge reductions in its Medicare forecasts between 2010 and 2020. Most of those reductions came from a category the budget office calls “technical adjustments,” which it uses to describe changes to public health and the practice of medicine itself.
Older Americans appear to be having fewer heart attacks and strokes, the likely result of effective cholesterol and blood pressure medicines that became cheap and widely used in recent years, according to research from Professor Cutler and colleagues. And drug makers and surgeons haven’t developed as many new blockbuster treatments recently — there has been no new Prozac or angioplasty to drive up spending. (Medicare is currently barred by statute from covering the new class of expensive anti-obesity drugs.)
Parts of the health system appear to have become more efficient, as medical providers have been more cautious about adopting new therapies without much evidence, and more care has shifted outside hospitals into cheaper settings…
SCOOP — The FDA plans to green light updated versions of the Covid booster as early as Friday, according to four people familiar with the agency’s plans.https://t.co/i8inNpOtUl by @BerkeleyJr @albamonica
— Amanda Terkel (@aterkel) September 6, 2023
ICYMI — previously the first approval was expected next Tuesday, Sept. 12th:
Thursday Morning Open Thread: World’s Best Healthcare…Post + Comments (165)