Posted on 11/11/2009 2:50:42 AM PST by reaganaut1
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Maine is the Charlie Brown of health care. The state’s legislators have tried for decades to fix its system, but their efforts have always fallen short: health insurance premiums are still among the least affordable in the nation, health care spending per person is among the highest and hospital emergency rooms are among the most crowded. Indeed, many overhauls to the system have done little more than squeeze a balloon — solving one problem while worsening another.
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Maine’s history is a cautionary tale for national health reform. The state could never figure out how to slow the spiraling increase in medical costs, hobbling its efforts to offer more people insurance coverage. Many on Capitol Hill have criticized national reform legislation for similarly doing little to tame costs.
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To conservatives, Maine proves that government efforts to strictly regulate the nation’s health insurance market are doomed. Many of the reform proposals circulating on Capitol Hill have already been tried in Maine.
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[T]he state is one of 17 that limit how much insurers can charge people for being older, and it does not allow exclusions for previous illnesses — both policies that are part of national reform proposals.
But one result is that premiums for younger people are relatively high. Although national proposals would require that nearly everyone get coverage or pay a penalty, Maine’s Legislature rejected such a mandate so many young people do not or cannot buy insurance — further skewing the insured pool to sicker and older people and making premiums that much higher.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
For more details about what Maine has done, you can read some of the reports of the Maine Heritage Policy Center.
It would help if we had competition. Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Dirigo are our insurance plans and they are tied in with each other.
We do subsidize those without coverage when we pay, in cash, $700 for 3 stiches or $6500 for 18 hours in a small hospital which included 3 blood tests. The gov’t does subsidize those without insurance when an 80 year old woman gets a new pacemaker because the first one had defects. She was in Maine Med for 24 hours (not her fault) and the bill came to 84K but that did not include the doctor’s bill.
It would be nice if the market would open to other insurance companies.
FYI Dirigo is subsidized by our tax dollars for those who qualify for that plan.
I’m surprised to see an article like that in the NY Times.
Agenda by design, they know it doesn’t work and they know we know it doesn’t work. The American citizen is outside looking in, the door is locked and the only way in is to break the door down.
I use Machias General Hospital. I have never stood in line. I was always treated great. My last 6 stiches and an x-ray were very affordable. I do not have insurance.
Go figure.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus
The whole medical ‘industry’ is so regulated, that it will not attract investors, nor innovators. So, prices in total will not come down, therefore it doesn’t really matter if there is insurance competition. They can not do much about prices either.
For now, the most effective, but in no way the best method is government forcing low prices on existing workers, hospitals, physicians, drug companies.
After a while though, high educated workers will flee the increased work, decreased pay and increased beurocratization and declining job satisfaction. So the will be shortages. I.E., lower costs, but no service. In other words, free but not available, which is economics 101. You do not get what you do not pay for.
Eventually I see a high cost, high tax, DMV/Post Office labor quality, service speed, total unionization of all medical workers and physicians, with special hospitals for elite political types and their families.
Insurance companies are just small riders in the whole thing.
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