By Sarah Kliff

The Washington Post

Jan. 21, 2013

The longer-term test for the health-care law will have less to do with extending coverage and more to do with another key health-care challenge: Costs have grown faster than the rest of the economy for decades. They wiped out the past decade’s worth of wage growth and present a huge challenge for the federal budget moving forward.

Lately, though, health-care cost growth has slowed to an all-time low, rising at the same rate as the rest of the economy. The health-care law includes 45 changes to how doctors get paid for delivering health care, largely aimed at reducing the rate of cost growth. These include everything from flat reductions to Medicare reimbursement rates to new payment models that try to reward doctors for the quality of care they provide, rather than the quantity.

Read the full blog post here

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Economic Policy Project