Open Letter to President Obama About His JAMA Paper

KIP SULLIVAN, JD Dear President Obama, If I were to tell you that alligators and southern accents are correlated and that alligators cause southern accents, what would you say? You’d say, “Yes, Kip, there is a correlation, but it’s weak. But more importantly, even if the correlation were strong, there is no plausible mechanism by which alligators could influence accents. Therefore I reject your conclusion.” I offer the same rejoinder to your argument in your August 2 JAMA article  that the Affordable Care Act has reduced health care inflation. In that paper, you claimed the ACA has “contributed to a sustained period of slow growth in per-enrollee health care spending,” and you cited the low average inflation rate of the five-year period 2010 to 2014. But that period correlates only loosely with the period of very low inflation that began in 2008 and ended in 2014. The fit is even worse if we define the “sustained period of slow growth” as 2004 or 2005 to 2014 as some do. To give you the benefit of the doubt, I’ll assume you were referring to the 2008-2013 inflation lull. Of far more importance, even if the correlation were strong, there is no plausible mechanism in the ACA that could have caused more than a tiny fraction of the 2008-2013 slowdown. Your post-presidency sabbatical The purpose of this letter is to urge you to find the time after you leave office to discover for yourself there is no cost containment in the ACA for the non-Medicare population a...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs