Government: Spending to rise under health care overhaul

WASHINGTON — The nation's health care tab will go up — not down — as a result of President Barack Obama's sweeping overhaul. That's the conclusion of a government forecast released Thursday, which also finds the increase will be modest.

The average annual growth in health care spending will be just two-tenths of 1 percentage point higher through 2019 with Obama's remake, said the analysis. And that's with more than 32 million uninsured gaining coverage because of the new law.

"The impact is moderate," said economist Andrea Sisko of Medicare's Office of the Actuary, the nonpartisan unit that prepared the report.

Factoring in the law, Americans will spend an average of $13,652 per person a year on health care in 2019, according to the actuary's office. Without the law, the corresponding number would be $13,387.

That works out to $265 more with the overhaul. Currently, Americans spend $8,389 a year per person on health care.

The new bottom line is guaranteed to provide ammunition for both sides of a health care debate that refuses to move offstage. Republicans are vowing repeal if they win control of Congress this fall, although they are unlikely to have enough votes to override an Obama veto.

For critics, the numbers show that the law didn't solve the cost problem, although Obama repeatedly said he wanted to bend the spending curve down.

The analysis found that health care spending will grow to nearly 20 percent of the economy in 2019. That siphons off resources that could be invested in education, research, transportation or other areas. Medical costs now account for about 17 percent of the economy, and some experts think that's already too much.

For advocates of the law, the numbers show that expanding coverage to 93 percent of eligible Americans comes at a relative bargain price. Moreover, if Congress sticks to cost controls in the legislation, there's potential beyond 2020 to rein in the growth of health care spending. The new projections show a slowdown starting around 2018.

"By the end of the projection period, we estimate (costs) will grow more slowly," said John Poisal, who worked on the forecast.

It's a long way off, but under the health care law, the big coverage push doesn't start until 2014.