I told you (and Ezra Klein) so

Many people including Richard S. Foster of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. and Ezra Klein predicted that the Affordable Care Act’s efforts to reduce Medicare outlays by squeezing providers would not work, because providers could opt out. I said they were wrong (fourth link here). Doctors with office practices can and do opt out of Medicare plan B, but one to zero hospitals have opted out of Medicare plan A. The ACA aimed (successfully) to reduce the growth of Medicare spending by reducing the growth of Plan A outlays, by requiring plan A recipients to accept a higher ratio of costs to Medicare payments or achieve economy wide productivity growth in a Baumol’s disease afflicted (labor intensive) sector.

I predicted that providers would accept the squeeze, because the alternative is accepting a massive reduction in gross revenues. Also, they have lower losses from care for the uninsured (especially if they are located in states with sane legislators who accepted the almost entirely federally funded expansion of Medicaid).

I predicted that there would actually be a reduction in the growth of Medicare spending. There has been a dramatic reduction (noted by Krugman)

Odd that so little has been written about this (almost as if DC journalism is wired for the GOP).

I admit that I haven’t written about is much myself (and this post is a bit egocentric).