More Bizarre Obamacare Propaganda (Dean Baker Edition)

File under Lies, Damn Lies and Dean Baker Use of Statistics

Dean Baker tweets:

Obamacare has led to a sharp slowing in the rate of growth of health care cost per insured person https://t.co/5kg3phPL2M

— Dean Baker (@DeanBaker13) October 15, 2016

This is an absolutely misleading statistic.

The entire idea behind Obamacare is to get healthy people, especially the young, coerced into purchasing health insurance. If you get more healthy people paying for insurance, the cost per insured person you would think would decline not just slow in the rate of growth.

Bottom line: Obamacare remains quasi-socialized medicine that will add distortions to the development of healthcare treatments, products and services. Baker propaganda notwithstanding.

The statistic Baker is promoting is meaningless in providing any understanding of what Obamcare is doing to the healthcare system.

-RW