Economy

Fiscal Times: “The Congressional Budget Office released a new working paper this week predicting that the Affordable Care Act will have a negative effect on the size of the U.S. labor supply over the coming decade.”

“Republican foes of Obamacare and some news organizations seized on the CBO report as evidence that the controversial health care law would eliminate or ‘kill’ 2 million jobs by 2025.”

“But the CBO isn’t looking specifically at job loss. It’s making projections about aggregate hours worked and the total number of workers who choose to stay in the workforce: ‘The labor force is projected to be about 2 million full-time-equivalent workers smaller in 2025 under the ACA than it would have been otherwise,’ the agency wrote. That is, fewer work hours will be logged and paid for, the rough equivalent of 2 million jobs. But those two things — reduced hours across the economy and total jobs — are different things. And it’s important to note that the reduction in hours worked is relative to the number of hours that would have been worked in the absence of the law; in either case, total work hours continue to grow into 2025, it’s just a matter of by how much.”

Gallup: “Nearly three in four American adults (74%) who pay all or some of their health insurance premiums say the amount they pay has gone up over the past year. This percentage is up marginally from the 67% who last year said their costs increased, but it is generally in line with what Gallup has found in yearly updates since 2003.”

“Though Americans are still more likely to be satisfied than dissatisfied with their personal healthcare costs, the latest poll indicates they are more likely to be grappling with higher premium costs than in previous years.”

“What Americans pay for their healthcare premiums has not noticeably improved since the ACA’s implementation, and experts have stressed that a rise in premiums will continue for several years. Meanwhile, the White House contends that recent premium increases would have been larger if not for the ACA.”

The Wall Street Journal reports its findings on its study on “international drug-cost differences and what lies behind them.”

In the case of Norway, “U.S. prices were higher for 93% of 40 top branded drugs available in both countries in the third quarter. Similar patterns appeared when U.S. prices were compared with those in England and Canada’s Ontario province. Throughout the developed world, branded prescription drugs are generally cheaper than in the U.S.”

“The upshot is Americans fund much of the global drug industry’s earnings, and its efforts to find new medicines. ‘The U.S. is responsible for the majority of profits for most large pharmaceutical companies,’ said Richard Evans, a health-care analyst at SSR LLC.”

“The government systems also are the only large drug buyers in most of these countries, giving them substantial negotiating power.”

“Medicare, the largest single U.S. payer for prescription drugs, is by law unable to negotiate pricing. For Medicare Part B, companies report the average price at which they sell medicines to doctors’ offices or to distributors that sell to doctors. By law, Medicare adds 6% to these prices before reimbursing the doctors. Beneficiaries are responsible for 20% of the cost.”

“The arrangement means Medicare is essentially forfeiting its buying power, leaving bargaining to doctors’ offices that have little negotiating heft.”

Gallup: “Slightly fewer than one in three Americans (31%) say that they or a family member have put off any sort of medical treatment in the past year because of the cost. This is essentially unchanged from the 33% who said this in 2014, and the figure has remained steady for the past decade. The majority of Americans (68%) say they did not have to put off care because of the cost.”

Obamacare has “provisions that are designed to limit the cost of healthcare services, but despite all these measures, a consistent third of the country say that in the past year, they or their family has had to delay medical treatment. The ACA has achieved objectives considered important by the policymakers who crafted the law — most notably, ensuring that a greater a number of Americans have medical insurance — but on this cost-related metric, its influence has not been felt.”

Gallup: Americans continue to name the cost of (22%) and access to (20%) healthcare as the most urgent health problems facing the U.S. Obesity and cancer are next on the list, cited by 15% and 14%, respectively. No other issue receives more than 2% of mentions from Americans.

The Obama administration has made a major effort to address healthcare cost and access by passing the Affordable Care Act. Since its major provisions went into effect, there has been a drop in the percentage of Americans who lack health insurance. But the law probably did not affect the healthcare situation for the large majority of Americans, most of whom get health insurance through an employer or Medicare. The percentages mentioning both cost and access are down from the later years of George W. Bush’s administration, even though they remain the top overall issues.

Forbes: “The likelihood that small employers will terminate health coverage for their workers due to the Affordable Care Act is far less likely than the ‘early days of the health reform debate,’ according to a new analysis.”

“Employee benefits consultancy Mercer … said just 7% of employers with 50 to 499 employees now say they are ‘very likely’ or ‘likely’ to terminate coverage for their workers within the next five years.”

“This is in sharp contrast to the early days of the health reform debate when employers worried the law would ad layers of bureaucracy and higher costs from various new rules and mandates. In 2013, one in five small employers, or 21%, said they were ‘very likely’ or ‘likely’ to terminate their health plans, the Mercer annual employer health survey shows. And in 2014, the likelihood of employers dropping coverage fell to 15% of these smaller employers.”