obamacare costs to individuals

One of the many promises of the Obamacare law was that it would help reduce out-of-control healthcare costs.

But as we get closer to the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act in January 2014, it's becoming increasingly clear that the law will do little to lower what healthcare providers charge.

Basically, the Obamacare law focuses mostly on who will pay and how they pay - the insurance side of the equation - rather than why costs are so high and rise much faster than the overall inflation rate.

Journalist Steven Brill, who wrote an exhaustive piece on this topic for the March issue of Time magazine, was blunt as he broke the bad news personally last week to the Senate Finance Committee at a hearing to determine if adding transparency to the pricing of healthcare services could help control costs.

"[Transparency] starts the conversation about prices that we didn't have in the debate over Obamacare. It's only a start," Brill said. "Obamacare does nothing about these prices. Nothing to solve the problem - Zero."