Mass. mess: ObamaCare's ugly future

NY Post ^ | August 16, 2010 | SALLY PIPES

[Scanian]

Massachusetts' strug gle to make "universal health insurance" work continues to be an excellent peek at what the entire nation faces when ObamaCare kicks in -- and the picture remains ugly.

Gov. Deval Patrick has just reached a truce with three of the four top insurers in the state, compromising on this year's rate hikes for the small-business and individual markets. Plus, the state last week passed a law allowing some small businesses to form cooperatives to bargain jointly for health plans. But the numbers still don't add up.

When the Bay State passed its health-reform law in 2006, 9 percent of non-elderly adults lacked insurance; that's now down to 5 percent. The law didn't reduce expensive emergency-room use as predicted. Instead, emergency-room visits have climbed by 9 percent, or about 3 million visits, from 2004 to 2008. But it's bankrupting the state, while the pressures on small businesses and on health-care insurers and providers continue to build toward the breaking point.

Health care now consumes 35 percent of the state budget, up from 22 percent in 2000. Patrick recently asked Washington for $473 million to help make the Massachusetts reform work -- on top of the $1.2 billion in support the feds have already kicked in over three years, more than $3,000 per person in the state.

[DontTreadOnMe2009]

$3,000 per person in the state

Plus what the state paid

Plus what the taxpayers paid

No one to do the math, right?

[onona]

Hmmmm, I wonder what the death panel situation is looking like in Mass. Any care refusal stories out there yet ?

[Darkwolf377]

It’s funny how all the libs I know here in Boston who were braying about how Patrick was a “competent black businessman” and how healthcare is a right and all that haven’t brought up either topic in MONTHS. When they inevitably do, I’m sure they will drone on about how I’m a selfish whatever and I don’t care about the poor and so on, completely ignoring those statistics and figures that were so damned important to them for a couple of years.

[screaminsunshine]

Spreading your Grandchildrens wealth around?

[jocon307]

The NY Post usually has dreadful comments, when it has any at all. Surprisingly this article has one good comment from “Cats”. Cats says “This plan was the “brainchild” of then-Governor Mitt Romney. Remember that whenever he is touted as the leading candidate for the Republican Party nominee for President of the United States. Do Conservatives want Mitt Romney at the head of the Republican Party ticket? I for one do not and would not support him in primaries and would not vote for the Republican ticke[t] were he at the top.”

I think it would be helpful if Romney just threw in the towel RIGHT NOW.

[Jimmy Valentine]

I would like to thank the State of Massachusetts for being the guinea pig that demonstrates conclusively that "universal" health care is a sham, a failure and a fiscal disaster.

Sorry for your pain, folks but you have sealed the argument for me.

[Erik Latranyi]

Countdown to the assault on doctor pay in the name of “reducing costs” and “getting even” with the wealthy.

[rbg81]

The law didn’t reduce expensive emergency-room use as predicted. Instead, emergency-room visits have climbed by 9 percent, or about 3 million visits, from 2004 to 2008.

---

I wonder how much of that is due to illegals? It really doesn’t make sense that having more people insured would increase emergency room visits. One common sense solution (which I never hear) is to turn most of these people away from emergency room and send them to these primary care clinics in strip malls. Most of these “emergencies” are things those clinics could deal with at a fraction of the cost. But that would be MEAN.

[gussiefinknottle]

The strip mall clinics actually demand you pay for services
which none of illegals will do even if they can afford to.
thank bill clinton for his executive order that required
all hospital emergency rooms to post in spanish
that you can not be turned away for medical care and
if you are, to report it(i’m not sure to who.) bill
clinton is personally responsible for the flood of illegal immigrants,
the closing of hospitals, loss of sovereignty, deaths,
crime, etc that these people have brought in. and jorge bush
did nothing to stop it.

[wiggen]

“Health care now consumes 35 percent of the state budget, up from 22 percent in 2000. Patrick recently asked Washington for $473 million to help make the Massachusetts reform work — on top of the $1.2 billion in support the feds have already kicked in over three years, more than $3,000 per person in the state.”
The precious line in here is,”to help make the Massachusetts reform work.....” Wait. It doesn’t pay for itself now and won’t in the future so how is that making it work?
I think the real basic root difference between conservatives and liberals is we have a survival instinct and they don’t. If something not only doesn’t work but is causing harm to many then we say drop it and they put their hands out for more money. Same instinct is at work with illegals immigration.

[Buckeye McFrog]

this is why Mitt Romney needs to have a major “Mea Culpa, I was SO wrong!” speech very soon if he hopes to have any prayer in ‘12.

[GailA]

Soylent Green by cartoonistx

WE THE PEOPLE BY RAY STEVENS

[BfloGuy]

It really doesn’t make sense that having more people insured would increase emergency room visits.

Actually, it makes perfect sense. Physicians are now overburdened to the point that they won't take new patients. Combine that with those doctors who refuse the MassCare patients because the state reimbursement is so low.

People end up at the emergency room -- nowhere else to go. It doesn't have much to do with illegals at all.

[PSYCHO-FREEP]

SHUSHHHH!

Don’t you know?........

It’s Deficit neutral and won’t cost us taxpayers a DIME! It will actually make money, and pay down the deficit, and do your excess laundry for you, walk your dog and get your news paper in the morning.....(Oh, I forgot, nobody gets the Newspaper any more.)

But, you know, If I say it you have to believe it!

[2ndDivisionVet]

The majority of citizens currently disapprove of 15 out of 16 of Mr. Barack Obama’s policies/legislation. To be succinct: Nothing has improved since his election, but a number of things have gotten worse.

In the 2010 and 2012 elections, the “Party of No” may easily prove to be preferable to “The Party of Yes We Can Drag the Country into a New Recession/Great Depression.” Perhaps it is time to stop and take a number of deep breaths.

Mr. Obama’s recent Home Affordable Modification Program is an utter failure by anyone’s reckoning and is the latest example of the man’s inability to think at a national level. He is a glib amateur.

Mr. Obama will lose to whoever might run against him in 2012 unless that person is former Governor Mitt Romney. He is the only person that can keep Mr. Obama in office and cause us four more years of suffering high unemployment and huge deficits.