Obamacare curing nation’s ills

Mercury News, San Jose, Calif.: As Republicans in Congress gear up in January for their most aggressive attack yet on President Barack Obama’s health-care reforms, here’s something they probably won’t mention: The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced last week that U.S. health-care spending grew just 3.6 percent in 2013.

That’s the slowest growth rate on record since 1960 and the fifth straight year of low health-spending growth. It’s also less than half the average annual increase during President George W. Bush’s eight years in office.

The Affordable Care Act isn’t the whole reason. Continued recovery from the recession helps. But the drop in health insurance premium growth from 4 percent in 2012 to 2.8 percent last year indicates the president’s reforms are working as planned.

That’s just one measure of success. Here’s another: The number of uninsured Americans has dropped from 21 percent to 13 percent of the population in just the past year. And that’s before the upcoming enrollment period, when more citizens are expected to join the insured. In California alone, 3.4 million people who didn’t have health insurance before sign-ups last fall are now covered.

As to the charge that if the ACA went into effect, it would stifle medical innovation in the United States: The pharmaceutical industry announced there were more drug launches in 2013 than in any of the past 10 years.

These facts are extremely important since Democrats lost control of the Senate.