Obamacare cheaper than expected

Amidst the dark skies of the Healthcare.gov launch, some daylight may finally be emerging with respect to one of the critical goals of the Affordable Care Act -- bending the cost curve of America's expensive health care system.

According to a New York Times report earlier this week, the Congressional Budget Office has quietly removed hundreds of billions of dollars from the projected costs of Obamacare, primarily the result of an anticipated decrease in the federal government's contribution to the Medicaid expansion program along with the projected cost of the subsidy payments to those buying private insurance policies on the healthcare exchanges.

Why the good news?

The more favorable projections are the direct result of the slowing trend in the growth of health care spending over the past five years leading to a slowdown in rising costs. While, 10 years ago, per-capita spending on health care had been growing by an average annual rate of 5 percent, that number was dramatically cut to 1.8 percent during the 2007-2010 period and reduced even further to 1.3 percent in the years following 2010.

Do we have Obamacare to thank for this highly successful "bending" of the cost curve?

Naturally, the answer depends upon who you ask as there simply is no definitive way of knowing -- yet.