Although healthcare companies will save billions of dollars in tax savings next year under the Republican tax plan, the average patient won't save nearly that much, Axios reports.
By looking at investor calls and fourth-quarter financial reports from publicly traded health care companies, Axios found that UnitedHealth Group, CVS Health, Anthem and others expect to save $10 billion on taxes in 2018.
University of Michigan health care business professor Erik Gordon told the website that the GOP tax law is "unlikely to lead to significant, long-lasting savings for patients."
Rodney Whitlock, former Republican health policy aide, added that "companies lower prices on shoes, phones, cars (comparatively or versus inflation) to get your business. Health care pricing doesn't work that way. So the natural pressure to use the tax code to lower pricing ... isn't there in health care."
However, some insurance providers will have to grant their customers a rebate as part of the Affordable Care Act
"If you subsidize something, you get more of it," conservative health policy analyst Chris Jacobs told Axios. "Companies using tax reform to lower prices would yield out-of-pocket savings to consumers, but it would also encourage consumption — some of which would be necessary and useful, and some of which probably wouldn't."
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