WASHINGTON POST: …the new data, published in the journal Health Affairs, showed health spending grew by a relatively slow 3.7 percent in 2012, about one percentage point slower than the rest of the economy. That meant health care shrunk as a percent of gross domestic product, falling from 17.3 percent in 2011 to 17.2 percent in 2012.
Federal officials caution that the current slowdown looks similar to the other periods that have followed a recession, where health spending tends to tick upward at a slower rate than the rest of the economy. They also said that the Affordable Care Act has had a “minimal” impact on health care spending. At most, they believe the law increased health spending by 0.1 percent between 2010, when it was passed into law, and 2012…
[Micah Hartman, a statistician in Medicare’s office of the actuary ] also pointed to a few other factors that likely contributed to 2012’s slow health cost growth. Patents expired for a handful of major drugs, including cholesterol medication Lipitor and Singular, which treats asthma. With many patients switching to generic versions of these brand-name medications, spending on prescription drugs grew by a meager 0.4 percent in 2012… (more)
I believe that measurement of the US macro economy, with any reputable degree of accuracy, is just about impossible. Ergo the reason stimulus fails is because the stimulus is haphazardly applied.
Obama care did not really take effect until this year (2014) and the largest segments of the population have been granted wavers until 2015 thus the “minimal impact” conclusion is probably correct.
But what is said by the Washington Post matters not. One need only look at ones current health care premium price and the number of policy holders who were dropped to garner the facts. Health care insurers are forward pricing and No amount of newspaper obfuscation will hide it.