Recession Not Health Law May Be Responsible for Cost Curb

The four-year slowdown in U.S. health-care spending will end next year, and there is no sign the Affordable Care Act will significantly curb the acceleration in costs, government actuaries said in a report.

President Barack Obama has said the 2010 health-system overhaul helped curb national medical spending, which that year rose 3.9 percent, or about half pre-recession levels. Actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, who don’t answer to the White House, said yesterday in the journal Health Affairs that costs eased because of the economy, not Obamacare.