Obamacare Has Not Slowed Down Premium Growth Relative To Wages

The latest KFF/HRET Employer Health Benefits Survey figures have arrived with yet more bad news about Obamacare. Obamacare’s fiercest advocates have been quick to trumpet a purported slowdown in health spending and way too quick to assign Obamacare the credit for this. They’ve failed to acknowledge two inconvenient truths. The slowdown began many years before Obamacare was ever enacted into law. More importantly, and what I’ll highlight in this post, they’ve failed to point out the entire economy has slowed down thanks to Obamanomics, including worker wages, whose growth has been anemic. It is only when we compare slow health spending to even slower growth in wages that the real truth about Obamacare is revealed: Obamacare has not slowed down premium growth relative to wages at all!