Health Care Market Was On the Mend, Until ObamaCare

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Health Reform: The latest government report on national health spending provides more evidence that ObamaCare will act as poison to a health care system that was already on the mend.

In 2011, the last year for which data are available, spending on health care climbed just 3.9% for the third year in a row.

The press is dismissing it as the result of the recession, while the Obama administration claims ObamaCare deserves credit. Neither is true.

Health spending skyrocketed during previous economic slumps — it saw double digit increases during the deep, prolonged 1981-82 downturn, for example.

Plus, the spending trend had been falling for years before the last recession, dropping from 7% in 2004 to 4.7% in 2008. In any case, even after the recession ended in mid-2009, spending growth still slowed.

Insurance premiums showed the same trend. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, annual family premium increases fell from 9% in 2005 to 5.4% in 2007, and to 3% in 2010.

The health care market, it turns out, was already figuring out how to control costs long before ObamaCare. Witness the explosive growth in Health Savings Accounts.