$2.5T In Savings?! Thanks, ObamaCare

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West Wing Reports: Guess How Much Healthcare Could Cost Now?

A report issued Wednesday says that the most recent official projections indicate that the U.S. will spend $2.5 TRILLION LESS on health care from 2014 until 2019 than had been originally estimated at the time the Affordable Care Act became law in 2010. That represents a nearly 11 percent decrease in projected spending, according to the report issued by the Urban Institute, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

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Russ Britt: Obamacare Making Insurers More Responsive, Efficient: Study

A provision in Obamacare governing spending guidelines for health insurers essentially has forced carriers to become more efficient and responsive, a study released Wednesday finds. The joint study from the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation says minimum requirements in the Affordable Care Act that mandate how much insurers must spend on medical care resulted in savings of

$5 billion for consumers in 2011 and 2012, the first two full years after Obamacare was enacted in March 2010. For 2011 policies, insurers paid $1.1 billion in rebates. By 2012, insurers had adjusted premiums to comply with the new guidelines, though they still ended up paying more than $500 million in rebates. But that adjustment in premiums saved consumers an estimated $3.4 billion, Clemans-Cope says.

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Study by @RWJF @urbaninstitute finds Obamacare is making insurers more responsive, efficient | from @russbrittmktw buff.ly/1e3HVfG

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Steve Anderson (@EyeOnInsurance) May 14, 2015

Big change in projected healthcare costs. Trillions. westwingreports.com/guess-how-much…

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West Wing Reports (@WestWingReport) April 08, 2015

$86.2 million

WH: Today, Bloomberg News reported that big insurance companies – companies like UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Cigna Corp – spent $86.2 million to fight health insurance reform in 2009.  Insurance companies and their allies were desperate to preserve their ability to discriminate against you if you had a preexisting condition, drop your care when you got sick and limit the amount of care you could receive in a year or a lifetime.

Thankfully, they didn’t succeed, but some folks still want to take us back to the bad old days when insurance companies had all the power and doctors and patients took a back seat. In fact, the New York Times recently reported that since the law was passed, opponents of reform spent $108 million on negative television advertisements about the law. And these powerful interests may spend millions more opposing reform in the future.

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