The Affordable Care Act from 2010 had/has three primary goals according to Healthcare.gov
- Make affordable health insurance available to more people. The law provides consumers with subsidies (“premium tax credits”) that lower costs for households with incomes between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level.
- Expand the Medicaid program to cover all adults with income below 138% of the federal poverty level. (Not all states have expanded their Medicaid programs.)
- Support innovative medical care delivery methods designed to lower the costs of health care generally.
The cost of anything is dependent on a few things; demand, supply, and cost of doing business. There will always be a demand for health care and the supply of doctors will always be limited. Therefore we cannot solve the cost of health care based on a supply and demand model. Unfortunately that is what the Affordable Care Act tried to do for the most part.
The only thing that can be used to help lower the cost of health care is the cost of doing business. The cost of doing business includes such things as the cost of school, malpractice insurance, building to work out of, equipment, and lets not forget all those times they don't get paid.
It is a dirty little secret of the insurance industry; often the only money the doctors receive is what you pay as a co pay. Some times the doctors will receive more than the co pay after your deductible and out of pocket expense limits are met, but this is a fraction of what the billed cost is. As a result they have to raise their prices to ensure that the minimum amount needed to keep their doors open is met or they have to take on more cases than ideal. Because the doctors are raising their rates, the insurance companies require higher and higher premiums for the same level of coverage.
It is a trap that we are all stuck in, this raising of rates, but it is really the people who are sick who suffer.
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