Not Just Health Care
I highly commend to your attention this eye-popping article in today’s Wall Street Journal written by Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute. Although Romney, who will probably once-again be running for President is obliged to deny it, RomneyCare in his home state of Massachusetts is experiencing all the cost and coverage problems the ObamaCare critics have been proclaiming for the last year.
There are only four major insurance companies in the state, according to the author, which bolsters my own conclusion in articles previously written on this blog, that companies restricted to a relatively small area cannot enjoy the benefits that competition in a much larger geographic area would produce: primarily, a larger risk pool that could keep cost low while providing comprehensive coverage with no exclusions. Of course, no one has experience with a large system of that type, but we can see in this article that it doesn’t work in a small one. Here’s a bit of what she says:
While Massachusetts’ uninsured rate has dropped to around 3%, 68% of the newly insured since 2006 receive coverage that is heavily or completely subsidized by taxpayers. While Mr. Romney insisted that everyone should pay something for coverage, that is not the way his plan has turned out. More than half of the 408,000 newly insured residents pay nothing, according to a February 2010 report by the Massachusetts Health Connector, the state’s insurance exchange.
Another 140,000 remained uninsured in 2008 and were either assessed a penalty or exempted from the individual mandate because the state deemed they couldn’t afford the premiums.
Mr. Romney’s promise that getting everyone covered would force costs down also is far from being realized. One third of state residents polled by Harvard researchers in a study published in “Health Affairs” in 2008 said that their health costs had gone up as a result of the 2006 reforms. A typical family of four today faces total annual health costs of nearly $13,788, the highest in the country. Per capita spending is 27% higher than the national average.
The state’s stubbornly high health costs are partly the result of intrusive government regulations that stifle competition in the insurance market and strict mandates on what services insurance must cover. A 2008 study by the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy found that the state’s most expensive insurance mandates cost patients more than $1 billion between July 2004 and July 2005. The Massachusetts health reform law left all of them in place.
Further, insurance companies are required to sell “just-in-time” policies even if people wait until they are sick to buy coverage. That’s just like the Obama plan. There is growing evidence that many people are gaming the system by purchasing health insurance when they need surgery or other expensive medical care, then dropping it a few months later.
The worst part is that the doctor and hospital shortages and extended wait times for care are exactly what our press generally refuses to describe in the foreign universal-care systems that the Obamanists seem to adore. I think we’re in for a very rough ride.
via Grace-Marie Turner: The Failure of RomneyCare – WSJ.com.
ADDENDUM A:
The Boston Herald just broke the news that Tim Cahill, the State Treasurer, says the state health system is being propped up with federal dollars in order to allow ObamaCare to use it as a model. The column, by journalist Jessica van Sack, is here.
The real problem is that this . . . sucking sound of money has been going into this health-care reform,” Cahill said. “And I would argue that it’s being propped up so that the federal government and the Obama administration can drive it through.”
Gov. Deval Patrick argues the state’s universal health care program has added 1 percent to the budget, but Cahill said the real impact is buffered by federal dollars.
Stay tuned for more skullduggery. There’s a lot of desperation in Foggy Bottom.
