> False. The ACA imposed a minimum 80-85% medical loss ratio on insurance companies. This is a cost control.

That's not a cost control. That's a price inflater!

If the only way for them to make more money is to have the price of things go up, what do you expect they're going to be in favor of? In a perfect world (from the perspective of the insurance company), everything from premiums to procedures goes up X% so that their profits go up X%.

That's a seriously messed up system and may be the most egregious part of the entire ACA.

Insurers have to compete against other insurers on price. Otherwise they lose market share. All of them negotiate hard with providers to drive down prices.

But total medical spending growth slowed, which seems to indicate that this price inflation didn't happen.

Did it? As an industry, hospital and lab management companies outperformed the general stock market (which itself was doing very, very well) for 2010-2015. Compare VHT vs VTI, for example.

> But there aren't any real cost controls on providers, drug companies, medical device companies, and other suppliers.

That's what I said.