Side Effects: Obamacare Shifts Costs to the Privately Insured

Joshua Wade / July 06, 2010

President Obama promised to address the growing costs in health care with passage of his “reform” bill.  But instead of reducing costs, Obamacare will succeed only at shifting the burden to taxpayers and the privately insured.  Americans with private health insurance will indirectly subsidize care received by those reliant on Medicare and Medicaid. It is for this reason that for many Americans, Obamacare will actually cause medical costs to rise.  Some reform, right.

A recent study by PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that the rate of growth in medical costs will slow to 9.0% in 2011, down from 9.5% in 2010. However, this good news is tempered by the complexity of the responsible factors, a combination of inflators and deflators. Medical costs will decrease as consumers of health care make more responsible decisions, due to greater use of consumer-driven health plans, as generic drugs gain more market share, and as government subsidies for COBRA, enacted as part of the stimulus, expire. (more…)