How Does the Affordable Care Act Attempt to Control Health Care Costs?

The United States spent an estimated $2.5 trillion on health care in 2009, which translated to per capita costs of $8,086—the highest in the world. Reining in health care costs is a major priority for policymakers. Yet during the debate over health reform, no clear consensus emerged about how best to do it. For that reason, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) contains a broad variety of different provisions targeting costs.

  • Many provisions in the ACA aim to curb the rising cost of health care through greater competition among health plans, taxes on high-priced insurance coverage, measures to cut fraud and other approaches.
  • Policy-makers and health policy experts disagree about how much savings these provisions will achieve.

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