Obamacare saves American consumers over 1.5 billion.

Courtesy of the LA Times:  

Consumers saved nearly $1.5 billion in 2011 as a result of rules in President Obama's healthcare law that limit what insurance companies can spend on expenses unrelated to medical care, including profit, a new analysis shows. 

Much of those savings — an estimated $1.1 billion — came in rebates to consumers required because insurers had exceeded the required limits. 

The study by the New York-based Commonwealth Fund also suggests that the Affordable Care Act forced insurers to become more efficient by limiting their administrative expenses, a key goal of the 2010 law. 

In some cases, insurers passed savings on to consumers in the form of lower premiums and higher spending on medical care, the researchers found. This was primarily true in the individual market, where consumers buy health insurance on their own. 

The rules "appear to be producing important consumer benefits," concluded the report's authors, Michael McCue, a professor of health administration at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Mark Hall, a healthcare law professor at Wake Forest University. 

Administrative costs in the individual market dropped in 39 states, with major improvements in Delaware, Ohio, Louisiana, South Carolina and New York.

I guess those "death panels" that Sarah Palin was warning us about were ones that kill off wasteful spending and unnecessary administrative costs.

My ultimate hope is that soon Obama will set up those government sponsored national health insurance plans and drive these greedy pricks out of business for all time. In my opinion that was the goal all along, which is yet another reason that the politicians who receive massive campaign donations from health insurance companies fought so hard against the Affordable Care Act, and then later against Obama's reelection.