The Next ObamaCare Mirage -- By Thomas Miller and Abby McCloskey, The Wall Street Journal

(Corbis illustration)


The new line is that the health-care law will save money. That's also not true.

Supporters of President Obama are working overtime to backtrack from his promise that "If you like your health-care insurance, you can keep it. Period." While the president has conceded that this statement was inaccurate, the administration doesn't seem to have learned its lesson. The damage control plan is to spread another falsehood about the Affordable Care Act.

The claim this time is that the health-care "cost curve is bending, and the ACA is a significant part of the reason." That was what David Cutler—an influential Harvard economist and senior health-care adviser in Mr. Obama's 2008 presidential campaign—wrote in a Washington Post op-ed on Nov. 10.

The president jumped on this theme in his press conference on Nov. 14. "I'm not going to walk away from something that has helped the cost of health care grow at its slowest rate in 50 years," he said. On Wednesday, the White House Council of Economic Advisers published a report claiming that "the ACA is contributing to the recent slow growth in health care prices and spending."

These assertions border on nonsense. 

National spending on health care is projected to reach a record $2.9 trillion in 2013, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This is more than 25% above pre-recession spending levels in 2007. Health-care expenditures per capita and as a percentage of GDP are also at record highs, expected to top out this year at $9,216 and 18% respectively. 

The only apparent bright spot is that the average annual rate of health-care spending increases has slowed. Over the past three years, growth in health-care spending averaged 3.9% year-over-year, considerably slower than the historical average.

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