Princess Health and Health advocacy group says revised Medicaid program should improve health and manage cost, without creating barriers. Princessiccia

Princess Health and Health advocacy group says revised Medicaid program should improve health and manage cost, without creating barriers. Princessiccia

health care costs health insurance insurance coverage Medicaid

Gusty 14:16 Add Comment

By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News

A health-care advocacy group says the redesign of the Medicaid program should build on the expansion of eligibility and not include any more costs for patients.

�Kentucky has made tremendous gains in improving the health of its people since the expansion of Medicaid. More Kentuckians are receiving preventive services, substance use treatment and other critically needed care than ever before,� Emily Beauregard, executive director of Kentucky Voices for Health, said in a news release. �Any changes to the program should build on this success.�

Under federal health reform, then-Gov. Steve Beshear expanded Medicaid to households with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, which added about 400,000 more Kentuckians to the rolls. The federal government pays for the expansion through this year, but next year the state will be responsible for 5 percent, rising in annual steps to the reform law's limit of 10 percent in 2020. In all, about 1.3 million Kentuckians get free health care through Medicaid.

Gov. Matt Bevin has said the state can't afford to have more than a fourth of its population on Medicaid and has charged his administration to come up with a revised program that will improve health outcomes while making the expansion financially sustainable. Bevin hopes to accomplish this through a waiver from the federal government.

Bevin has said he favors a waiver program like Indiana's, which includes premiums and co-pays in some tiers of coverage, but has also said that he is not limited by this model and will develop a waiver to best fit the needs of Kentucky.

Kentucky Voices for Health is a coalition  of organizations that favor federal health reform, some of of which lobby the government. It said changes should engage consumers in their care and develop new ways to deliver care, without any obstacles to coverage such as premiums.

�Coverage is foundational,� Rich Seckel, executive director of Kentucky Equal Justice Center, said in the release. �It empowers us with tools to achieve and maintain health.�

The coalition also said the program should focus on coordination of care in areas with high use, and build on Kentucky's Health Data Trust, which provides complete and transparent information about healthcare utilization and outcomes to improve public health and quality of care delivery. Click here for the full report.

The group stressed the importance of meaningful stakeholder input to ensure the waiver is designed to meet the unique needs of Kentucky. So far, the administration has had no formal stakeholder meetings on the issue.

Under federal law, states seeking a waiver must hold at least two public hearings; one before it is submitted to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the second after CMS accepts the application.

Amanda Stamper, press secretary to Bevin, told The Courier-Journal that the administration welcomed "this sort of thoughtful input," and when asked if the waiver would include any premiums or co-pays said, "Everything is on the table and no decisions have been finalized."

Princess Health and Study says if Ky. cut its smoking rate to the national average, it could save $1.7 billion in health-care costs the very next year . Princessiccia

Princess Health and Study says if Ky. cut its smoking rate to the national average, it could save $1.7 billion in health-care costs the very next year . Princessiccia

health care costs local government research smokeless tobacco smoking ban smoking bans smoking cessation smoking ordinances state government tobacco prevention

Gusty 14:50 Add Comment

Illustration from University of California-San Francisco

By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News

If Kentucky could cut its smoking rate to the national average, it would save an estimated $1.7 billion on healthcare the following year, a study says.

Kentucky's smoking rate is 26 percent, and the national average is 18 percent.

The study at the University of California-San Francisco estimates that a 10 percent decline in the national rate would save $63 billion the next year in health-care costs.

"What it adds to our knowledge is that we can save money quickly," Ellen Hahn, University of Kentucky nursing professor and director of its smoke-free policy center, told Kentucky Health News. "We are not talking 18 to 20 years down the road. ... If we reduced our smoking rate at least 10 percent, we would see dramatic reductions in health-care cost in just one year."

The study also found that smoking makes Kentucky spend $399 more per person per year on health care than it would if the state's rate equaled the national rate. That was the highest figure of any state.

Conversely, low rates of smoking save Utah and California, respectively, $465 and $416 per person per year compared to what they would spend if their smoking rates were the national rate.

�Regions that have implemented public policies to reduce smoking have substantially lower medical costs,� the study's authors said in a news release. �Likewise, those that have failed to implement tobacco control policies have higher medical costs.�

Lexington's smoking rates dropped 32 percent in just one year after it enacted its smoking ban, which amounted to an estimated $21 million in smoking-related healthcare costs savings, according to a University of Kentucky study led by Hahn and published in the journal Preventive Medicine.

The UCSF study, published in PLOS Medicine, looked at health-care spending in each state and the District of Columbia from 1992 to 2009, and measured the year-to-year relationship between changes in smoking behavior and changes in medical costs.

Many studies have shown that smoking bans and other smoke-free policies decrease smoking rates, reduce smoking prevalence among workers and the general population, and keep youth from starting to smoke.

These have been some of the arguments for a statewide smoking ban, but efforts to pass one have stalled because new Republican Gov. Matt Bevin opposes a statewide ban and says smoke-free policies should be a local decision.

Bevin won big budget cuts from the legislature to set aside hundreds of millions of dollars for shoring up the state's pension systems, but the study hasn't made the administration look at a smoking ban as a source of savings. A ban passed the House last year but died in the Senate.

Asked how this study might affect the administration's position on a statewide smoking ban, Doug Hogan, acting communications director for the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, said in an e-mail, "Smoking bans are a local issue, rather than a one-size-fits-all solution." Bevin's office and Senate President Robert Stivers did not respond to requests for comment.

Hogan said the cabinet is committed to helping people quit smoking: "Education and proper policy incentives are critical tools that the state can use and as our commonwealth crafts its Medicaid wavier, it is looking very closely at ways to best incentivize smoking cessation to improve health and decrease cost to the commonwealth."

Dr. Ellen Hahn

Hahn said, "Kentucky has the dubious honor of leading the nation in cigarette smoking, and we have for many years. ... it is a major driver of health-care cost. And in a climate where we are trying to save every dollar ... I think that we should pay attention to this study because what it really says is that we can save a boatload of money if we help people quit and we can save it quickly."

Other possible tobacco-control measures include raising cigarette taxes, anti-smoking advertising campaigns and better access to smoking-cessation programs. Hahn said the state gets some money from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the tobacco master settlement agreement for prevention and cessation efforts, but the state needs to do more.

"We spend very little on the things that we know work, like helping people quit smoking, like doing widespread media campaigns on television, radio and print," she said. "We just don't do that in our state. We never have. In fact, we spend very little, about 8 percent of what the CDC say we should."

The study says significant health-care savings could occur so quickly because the risks for smoke-related diseases decreases rapidly once a smoker quits.

"For example, the risk of heart attack and stroke drop by approximately half in the first year after the smoker quits, and the risk of having a low-birth-weight infant due to smoking almost entirely disappears if a pregnant woman quits smoking during the first trimester," says the report.

"These findings show that state and national policies that reduce smoking not only will improve health, but can be a key part of health care cost containment even in the short run," co-author Stanton Glantz, director of the UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, said in the release.

Hahn said, "People don't realize how effective quitting smoking really is, how much money it really saves. So that is the value of this paper. It is a wake-up call for those of us doing this tobacco control work and for elected officials who are trying to save money and redirect funds and shore up the economic health of Kentucky. ... Doing all we can to reduce smoking saves lives and money. What's better than that?"

Princess Health and Medicaid stakeholders OK with healthy behavior incentives, oppose penalizing recipients who don't take part in cost sharing. Princessiccia

Princess Health and Medicaid stakeholders OK with healthy behavior incentives, oppose penalizing recipients who don't take part in cost sharing. Princessiccia

federal spending health care costs health insurance insurance coverage managed care Medicaid obamacare Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act state government

Gusty 13:11 Add Comment

By Melissa Patrick and Al Cross
Kentucky Health News

Groups of people concerned about changes in Kentucky's Medicaid program are open to the state offering incentives for healthy behaviors, but they don't want to penalize recipients who can't or won't pay premiums, deductibles or co-payments.

So reports the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, which convened a meeting May 12 to hear from people with stakes in the program: individual health-care providers, health systems, consumers, consumer advocates, payers, public-health professionals and representatives of higher education.

�Participants were unified in opposing penalties to enforce cost-sharing provisions� such as premiums, deductibles or co-payments, the foundation's consultant said in a report on the meeting.

However, they supported cost sharing for procedures not deemed medically necessary and �had diverse perspectives on this matter, ranging from opposing any cost-sharing in Medicaid to proposing specific premium and co-payment amounts,� such as $5 monthly premiums.

Also, �Participants were generally very supportive of implementing incentives for healthy behaviors such as smoking cessation and health risk assessments,� the report said. �Incentives might be reductions in the amount of cost-sharing or themselves supportive of healthy behavior,� such as gym membership.

Gov. Matt Bevin has said he wants Medicaid recipients to have "skin in the game" through cost-sharing, arguing that Kentucky can't afford to have more than a fourth of its population getting free medical care.

Under federal health reform, then-Gov, Steve Beshear expanded Medicaid eligibility to households with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, adding more than 400,000 more people to the rolls. The federal government pays for the expansion through this year, but next year the state will be responsible for 5 percent, rising in annual steps to the reform law's limit of 10 percent in 2020.

Bevin's administration is working on getting a waiver from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to create new ways to cover those in the expansion. Six states have such waivers, including Indiana, which Bevin has cited as an example of how Kentucky might change its program.

In Indiana, recipients who pay premiums based on income levels, ranging from $1 a month to 2 percent of income ($27 a month for those at 138 percent of poverty) get expanded benefits and are charged co-payments only for non-emergency use of emergency rooms, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. Those above the poverty level who fail to pay are disenrolled and barred from re-enrolling for six months, in what is known as a "lock-out" rule.

Bevin has indicated that he wants to announce his plan this summer. By law, states that seek a waiver must hold at least two public hearings: one at least 20 days before submitting the application to CMS, and the second after CMS accepts the application.

Stakeholders who attended the foundation's May 12 convening wanted to make sure their voices were heard early on in the process.

"Our goal is to help inform the process of changing the way Kentucky provides Medicaid services to ensure that we maintain the gains achieved under the Affordable Care Act, while also enabling the state to try new methods of ensuring access to affordable quality health care for Medicaid beneficiaries," Foundation President and CEO Susan Zepeda said in a news release.

"The biggest takeaway for me was the energy and commitment in the room," Zepeda said in a telephone interview. "A lot of thoughtfulness clearly went into sharing their experience and making suggestions on how to make the system more cost effective."

Before breaking into groups to offer their imput, stakeholders were given an overview of the state's Medicaid expansion and an overview of an issue brief created by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center at the University of Minnesota that looked at how waiver provisions are set up in five other states. Foundation staff wrote the 25-page "Stakeholder Input Report" that summarized suggestions and concerns and broke them into eight areas:

Cost-sharing and penalties: Health-care providers strongly opposed any cost-sharing, and uniformly opposed to any measure that involved "lock-out" penalties for failure to pay premiums, co-pays or deductibles.

"Our shared experience has been that we�ve been prohibited from denying care if a patient refuses or is unable to pay," the Physical and Oral Health Provider group said. "Therefore, the desired behavior isn�t actually enforced."

The Behavioral Health Provider group offered a compromise: �If the administration chooses to explore lock-outs we recommend that lock-outs be immediately lifted (upon payment) and payment be retroactive to the date the consumer re-enrolls.�

Participants in general were open to the idea of low co-payments, cost-sharing for non-medically necessary services, using Medicaid dollars to pay premiums for employer-sponsored insurance plans and charging co-payments for non-emergency use of the ER. They also agreed that certain groups, like those with chronic illnesses or disabilities, should be exempted.

Incentives: Most post-ACA waiver programs have implemented incentives for healthy behavior, and those at the meeting generally supported implementing evidence-based incentives, such as smoking cessation and health-risk assessments.

Zepeda said that most of the stakeholders wanted to see healthy behavior incentives used as credits against premiums, especially for recipients who can't afford them. "There is a recognition that people have a role to play in their own health care and the health decisions that they make," she said.

Benefits: Benefits include services covered under the health insurance plan. Some participants opposed any changes to current benefits; others wanted to expand existing benefits and still others suggested adding new benefits like housing. All agreed that medically necessary services should be covered for all enrollees.

Reimbursement: Kentucky shifted Medicaid in 2011 to managed care, in which managed-care organizations (usually insurance-company subsidiaries) are paid a flat fee per person as an incentive to limit claims. Providers have complained about the slow and low reimbursement, and participant suggestions included streamlining and accelerating the reimbursement process, increasing provider reimbursement rates, and adding new categories of reimbursed services and providers, like telehealth.

Systems improvement: Participants suggested simplifying administrative processes for providers; expanding providers' scope of practice; adding review panels; reducing the number of managed-care organizations; and creating a single list of drugs for all MCOs.

Health system transformation: Waivers allow states to explore ways to provide care differently through various transformation approaches. Suggestions included creating price transparency, through an all-payer, all-claims database; improving consumer health literacy; and moving beyond coverage issues to addressing access and quality.

�There was also interest among our group in examining a PCMH (patient-centered medical home) or health homes model to promote care coordination, and we feel strongly that pharmacists are essential part of the team and should be used in novel and more expansive ways,� the Colleges and Universities group said.

Evaluation: Waivers require states to perform an evaluation and make it public. Participants agreed that the process should include stakeholders and that findings should be made public periodically.

The Physical and Oral Health Provider group suggested the evaluation should answer the questions, �Have we maintained coverage levels? Have we improved access to care?�

Overarching themes: Many of the stakeholders mentioned two issues that were not included in the issue brief or discussion: integrating behavioral, physical and oral health services, and addressing the wide set of social factors that shape Kentucky's relatively poor health.

�Waivers should include methods to address social determinants of health as these areas are proving most effective in improving outcomes and reducing cost,� the Physical and Oral Health Provider group said. �We encourage inclusion of community health workers, peer support, medical respite care and other innovations to support social needs of patients.�

Zepeda said the Medicaid waiver drafting team faces many challenges. "We consider the rich conversation that happened on May 12 to be the start of the conversation," she said. "We have to find the cost effective win/win strategies that can reduce the cost of Medicaid going forward and let us continue to serve this expanded number of Kentuckians who now have health insurance."

Princess Health and Health-care consumers get little help resolving complaints, columnist says, citing some horrific examples. Princessiccia

Princess Health and Health-care consumers get little help resolving complaints, columnist says, citing some horrific examples. Princessiccia

consumers health care costs health insurance hospitals lung disease Medicare politics state governments

Gusty 18:08 Add Comment

By Trudy Lieberman
Rural Health News Service

Who protects consumers of health care?

Two recent emails from readers got me thinking about that question. I don�t mean consumers in their role as patients whose medical well-being is looked after by state medical boards and health departments that police doctors and hospitals. Those organizations don�t always do a perfect job protecting patients from harm, but at least they are in place.

But who protects patients when things go wrong on health care�s financial side? What happens when you receive a bill you didn�t expect and can�t afford to pay? What happens when insurers send unintelligible explanations of benefits you can�t understand? What about questionable loan arrangements to avoid medical bankruptcy? Consumers of health care are pretty much on their own.

From the 1960s though the 1980s when people complained, they got action from consumer organizations, government and even businesses that set up departments to handle complaints. That consumer movement is now but a flicker.

�We don�t have as many public-interest minded regulators, and officials who try to grab these issues by the horns and deal with them,� says Chuck Bell, director of programs for Consumers Union.

The emails I received show that although it�s an uphill battle to get redress, fighting back as an individual can get attention and may ultimately lead to better protections for everyone.

John Rutledge, a retiree, got snared in Medicare�s three-day rule by a hospital near his hometown Wheaton, Ill. At the end of March he took his wife, who was having breathing problems, to the hospital where she was held for three nights of �observation.� Patients must be in a hospital for three days as an in-patient before they are entitled to Medicare benefits for 100 days of skilled nursing home care, as I noted in a recent column.

Thousands of families have been caught when hospitals decide their loved ones are admitted for �observation,� a tactic that allows them to avoid repaying Medicare if government auditors find patients should not have been classified as �in-patients.� Playing the �observational� game is worth millions to hospitals but costs families tens of thousands of dollars when someone doesn�t qualify for Medicare-covered skilled nursing care.

Rutledge knew about the three-day rule. Both his doctor and a pulmonologist at the same medical practice recommended an in-patient stay, and Rutledge refused to sign a hospital document saying his wife was admitted for observation. Still, the hospital prevailed, claiming a consultant made the decision to keep her for �observation.�

Rutledge was stuck with a bill that, so far, totals over $15,000 for the skilled nursing care his wife did need. He said he had been a �significant donor� to the hospital foundation, and �I have told the foundation that what I spend as a result of �observation� will come out of what I planned to give them, starting with the annual gift.�

The second email came from Kathryn Green, a college history professor who lives in Greenwood, Miss. Green is fighting an air-ambulance company, which transported her late husband to a Jackson hospital after he suffered a fatal fall in their home. This �nightmare,� as she calls it, is a bill from the transport company that claims it�s outside her insurance network, and says she owes them $50,950.

�I am 63 and will have a devastated retirement if this is upheld,� Green told me.

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Mississippi, the administrator for her insurance carrier the State and School Employees� Health Insurance Plan, paid $7,192 of the $58,142 the transport company billed. Blue Cross has told Green that she should be held harmless and should not be charged for the �balance after payment of the Allowable Charge has been made directly to that provider.�

Green is raising a ruckus and has taken her case to state and national media, members of Congress, the state attorney general, and the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program. The company has told her it will begin collection efforts.

In both cases there�s a legislative solution. The three-day rule can be fixed by counting all the time a patient spends in the hospital whether they�re classified as an �in� or as an �observational� patient. The ambulance problem can be fixed by changing the 1978 airline deregulation law that prevents states from interfering with fares, services, and routes. But money and politics block the federal changes that would help people like Rutledge and Green.

�It�s like playing a game of health-insurance roulette,� Bell says. �Your coverage exposes you to these gaps that have been normalized. It�s become the way of doing business.� A resurgent consumer movement could change all that.

What consumer problems have you had with balance billing? Write to trudy.lieberman@gmail.com.

Princess Health and Many Americans, including those on Obamacare plans, can't afford their health-insurance deductibles, studies show. Princessiccia

Princess Health and Many Americans, including those on Obamacare plans, can't afford their health-insurance deductibles, studies show. Princessiccia

health care access health care costs health insurance obamacare Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act prescription drugs

Gusty 12:14 Add Comment

The United States has entered the era of high out-of-pocket medical cost as a way to keep insurance premiums low, but recent studies have found that many Americans are having trouble paying them, and the presidential candidates are hardly talking about this issue, Harris Meyer reports for Modern Healthcare.

Graph: Urban Institue's Health Reform Monitoring Survey

Nearly 25 percent of Americans surveyed last September who had coverage through employer plans, the Affordable Care Act, or individual plans outside health-insurance exchanges reported problems paying family medical bills in the previous 12 months, according to the Urban Institute's Health Reform Monitoring Survey. That compared with 16 percent of people on Medicaid and 27.8 percent of the uninsured.

The Kaiser Family Foundation also found that people on Medicaid or policies bought through the federal or state exchanges, also called marketplaces, couldn't afford their deductibles. This 2016 focus group study of 91 low-income Medicaid and exchange-plan enrollees in six cities found that "all reported that they had trouble affording some aspect of their current coverage, including premiums, deductibles, and/or co-payments." It also found that "nearly all marketplace participants" said they had received unexpected bills for services they thought were covered, and fear of this often led them to forgo care.

The latest Kentucky Health Issues Poll found that affordability is also a problem in Kentucky, with 28 percent of Kentucky households having at least one person who reported struggling to pay their medical bills in the previous 12 months. This rate was about the same as in 2014 and didn't vary much between those with insurance or without insurance.  In addition, the poll found that 20 percent of Kentucky households did not get the medical care they needed, or delayed care because of cost in the past 12 months.

This lack of affordability also affects health-care providers. Meyer reports that the chief financial officer for Community Health System told analysts at the first-quarter earnings report meeting that the fourth quarter of 2016 will be his company's best quarter, because patients will have hit their insurance deductibles and only then be able to afford needed care at their facilities.

�As individuals take on high deductibles and higher co-pays, they are essentially taking on insurance risk they can't necessarily afford,� Trevor Fetter, CEO of Tenet Healthcare Corp., told Meyer. Fetter told Meyer that his company now focuses on helping patients understand how to pay their bills, "including pressing for cash payments at the point of service."

What are the presidential candidates saying?

Meyers writes that Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton offers the most help for those who can't afford their high deductible. She says she "would require health plans to: cover three annual visits to a doctor for illness without applying the deductible; give insured people a $5,000-per-family refundable tax credit for out-of-pocket costs exceeding 5 percent of their income; cap out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs; bar providers and insurers from charging patients out-of-network bills for services received at an in-network hospital; and strengthen states' authority to block excessive insurance premium increases."

"Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton's Democratic opponent, wants to eliminate premiums and cost-sharing entirely by establishing a tax-funded, government single-payer insurance program covering the full range of healthcare services, including long-term care," Meyer writes.

"Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has released a seven-point health policy agenda that doesn't directly address out-of-pocket costs. It would offer households a tax deduction for buying coverage, expand health savings accounts, and let insurers sell plans across state lines," Meyers writes.

Meyers calls the issues surrounding high deductible plans and high prescription drug costs "the domestic policy elephant in the room," and says these issues are not getting enough attention.

Princess Health and Poll finds many Kentuckians continue to struggle with cost of health care, though fewer are uninsured and struggling. Princessiccia

Princess Health and Poll finds many Kentuckians continue to struggle with cost of health care, though fewer are uninsured and struggling. Princessiccia

Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky health care costs health insurance health reform Medicaid poll

Gusty 17:21 Add Comment

While having health insurance certainly eases the cost burden of health care, nearly one-third of Kentucky adults struggle to pay their medical bills whether they have health insurance or not, and two in 10 say they often delay or skip needed medical care because of the cost, according to the latest Kentucky Health Issues Poll.

The poll, taken Sept. 17-Oct 7, found that in 28 percent of Kentucky households, someone had trouble paying medical bills in the previous 12 months. This didn't vary much between those with or without insurance, and was about the same as in 2014.

However, fewer Kentucky adults without insurance said they had difficulty paying their medical bills in 2015 than in 2014: down to 31 percent from 47 percent. In 2014, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was fully implemented in Kentucky with expansion of the federal-state Medicaid program to people with incomes up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average annual out-of-pocket cost per person for health care in the United States in 2014 was $1,036,which includes costs for any expenses not covered by insurance, says the report.

The Kentucky Health Issues Poll also found that 20 percent of Kentucky households did not get the medical care they needed, or delayed care because of the cost, in the past 12 months. This was more common among Kentucky's uninsured (27 percent) than those with insurance (19 percent).

However, these figures were an improvement from 2009, when 58 percent of uninsured Kentucky adults said they delayed or didn't get needed care, and from 2014, when 38 percent said so.

Poorer adults, those eligible for Medicaid, were more likely to forgo health care because they can't afford it; 29 percent of them said they had in the previous year, while only 16 percent of people with higher incomes said so.

"Being able to access medical care and being able to afford that care are two important factors to improve health in Kentucky," Susan Zepeda, CEO of the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky, said in a news release. "KHIP data indicate that fewer Kentucky adults are delaying medical care. This helps Kentuckians get and stay healthier, getting timely preventive services and early help with management of chronic conditions like diabetes and asthma and with smoking cessation counseling."

The poll was conducted by Institute for Policy Research at the University of Cincinnati and for the foundation and Interact for Health, formerly the Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati. It surveyed a random sample of 1,608 adults via landline and cell phone, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.

Princess Health andWashington Post columnist looks at data, talks to experts and concludes Obamacare is working, at less cost than expected.Princessiccia

Princess Health andWashington Post columnist looks at data, talks to experts and concludes Obamacare is working, at less cost than expected.Princessiccia

health care costs health insurance health reform obamacare politics president

Gusty 15:47 Add Comment

The federal health-reform law "has accomplished its goal of expanding coverage � at a significantly lower cost than expected," columnist Ruth Marcus writes for The Washington Post "after talking to numerous health-care experts and examining the data."

Marcus writes up front, "There is a legitimate ideological debate about whether it is a wise use of federal power to require individuals to obtain health insurance or a wise use of federal resources to spend so much on subsidizing coverage. What�s more puzzling, and more disturbing, is the still-raging division over the real-world effect of the ACA."

She says President Obama "over-promised when he told people that, if they liked their health insurance, they could keep it; by its own terms, the law set new standards for required coverage. Certainly, some individuals, particularly younger and healthier customers, find themselves paying more; again, such winners and losers were an inevitable consequence of the individual mandate and minimum-coverage rules. Meantime, the scariest warnings � of employers rushing to drop coverage and insurance markets ensnared in death spirals of ever-rising premiums � have not come to pass.
Where the law has yet to fully deliver on its promises � and some wonder whether it will � is in the area of cost containment and quality improvement."

Marcus backs up her assessment with facts. For example, "Health-care costs and premiums for employer-sponsored insurance (the way most of us obtain coverage) have been rising at their lowest levels in years. On the exchanges, premium increases during the law�s second year mirrored that modest growth � averaging 2 percent on some mid-range plans and 4 percent on the lowest-cost ones, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation."