After their failure to keep the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) from becoming law, the congressional Republicans told a whole stack of lies about it. Among that stack of lies was the claim that Obamacare would drive up health care costs -- both for health care insurance premiums, and for actual health care itself. We already know that insurance premiums are not rising as the GOP predicted. They are going down in some states, and rising slower than in the past in other states -- thanks to Obamacare.
Now we have evidence that shows Obamacare may well be working as hoped to keep medical care costs down, instead of driving up costs as the GOP claimed would happen. The chart above was made with information from the Department of Health and Human Services (Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation). Their recent report shows that the uncompensated care costs (UCC) incurred by hospitals is slated to drop by about $5.7 billion this year in all states, and the reason for the drop in UCC is due to more people having health insurance due to Obamacare.
The biggest reason for this drop in uncompensated costs is due to more people being covered by Medicaid. Hospitals used to have to eat the cost of treating these people in their emergency rooms (and sometimes in their care units). These costs would normally be passed on to other patients in the form of higher overall hospital charges -- which would drive up the co-pay of patients and the costs paid by insurance companies (which would drive up the premium price to customers).
That's what would happen in private hospitals. In public hospitals, the prices would also rise to help pay for the hospital's UCC, but part of the UCC would also be paid for through higher city, county, or regional taxes. That means Obamacare is not only helping to keep hospital costs down, but also helping to keep the tax burden from rising.
We know that most of the reduction in hospital UCC is due to expansion of Medicaid, because 74% of the reduction in UCC has happened in states that have expanded Medicaid. But costs in states that did not expand Medicaid also went down (about 26% of the reduction in hospital UCC happened in these states) -- and that was also due to Obamacare.
It comes form people who could not afford insurance before Obamacare. Since they didn't have insurance, a large medical bill would bankrupt these people and cause the hospital to have to eat the cost of their care. These people made too much to qualify for Medicaid under Obamacare, but the new law gave them a subsidy to help them buy insurance -- and since they now have health insurance, the hospitals are getting paid for the medical care they provide to these people.
Once again, the Republicans are exposed as being liars about Obamacare. Obamacare has helped hospitals to keep their costs for patients down by making sure they get paid for a higher percentage of those patients. And while the hospitals located in states that have expanded Medicaid are seeing the biggest drop in uncompensated care costs, Obamacare has also reduced those costs in other states.
I still believe we should institute a government-run single-payer health insurance system. It would be more effective in both covering everyone and keeping medical costs down. But it is now an undisputed fact that Obamacare has been a huge improvement over what we had before it was passed.