The Affordable Care Act will drive health care spending up slightly, to nearly a fifth of the country’s gross domestic product by 2020, while extending insurance coverage to 30 million more Americans, a new report from CMS projects.
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But health care’s hefty share of the country’s economic output is reached through an average annual growth in medical spending of 5.8 percent over the next decade — just 0.1 percent more than would have been spent without the health reform law, the report claims…
Still, there are plenty of caveats. For one, the report assumes that physician payments next year will be cut by almost 30 percent in accordance with the Sustainable Growth Rate formula, even though Congress has blocked the cuts for the past 10 years.
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