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Dennis Byron
"All true Im sure but does not put the human dimension on the numbers. I am an actual Massachusetts resident and a taxpayer, am self-employed and am a forced customer of the collosally inefficient and duplicative health care insurance exhange that everyone seems to think is so great. My health care insurance premiums doubled because of RomneyCare, my co-pays and deductibles are up 200% because of RomneyCare, my sales taxes went up by 20% because of RomneyCare, and twice during 2010 I could not even buy health insurance because of RomneyCare. If I had needed a new doctor (I didnt), I probably could not have found one because more that 50% of the GPs in Massachusetts will not accept the exchange insurance everyone thinks is so great and for which I pay full price. Even fewer doctors will take the subsidized exchange insurance. This is just RomneyCare from a personal perspective.
In addition the state highway patrol and the courts were cut along with dozens of other programs to fund RomneyCare, state parks were closed to fund RomneyCare, aid to cities and towns were cut which raises local property taxes, all to fund RomneyCare. Your article talks about the Medicaid waiver Romney got from his buddy Leavitt but RomneyCare was heavily funded the last few years by stimulus money (which Governor Patrick got from his buddy). Now that that has dried up there are even worse cuts being made starting July 1, 2011 all because of RomneyCare.
I believe the Beacon Hill Institute relies on a calculation by Romneyites at the Mass Taxpayer Foundation that found that the net cost of RomneyCare to the state itself was about $2 billion since 2006. Romneyites think that is chickenfeed. That is the kind of a Romney-esque venture capitalist view of the world that I would expect of Romney supporters.
In addition tens of thousands of people have lost their employer sponsored health insurance because of RomneyCare, and hundreds of thousands have lost fully-insured healthcare as employers moved to self insure because of RomneyCare (see the latest Massachusetts Department of Healthcare Finance and Policy Quarterly Key Indicators report). In addition, thousands without political connections are going without insurance because of the costs (willing to pay the penalty) while thousands of other politically connected people get waivers. (For all of you that dont like to compare Romneycare with Obamacare, does that sound familiar?). The purchase of private insurance is down dramatically.
To make up for the huge out of control costs perpetrated by RomneyCare the Massachusetts government is now trying to force 25% of the population into HMOs by law and force the rest of us into HMOs by jawboning and threatening doctors and hopitals with losing accreditation and funding. Only this last sentence is not the direct responsibility of Mitt Romney. 120% of the growth in insured in Massachusetts has been for free or highly subsidized ($135 a month for a $1000/month-list-price policy for a person at 300% of the federal policy level).
RomneyCare was simply a slippery accounting trick to try to keep from losing some Medicaid funds. It has turned Massachusetts back into a part of England."
Wouldn't that be normal, working, taxpaying American families?