Posted on 08/17/2011 9:48:51 AM PDT by Hunton Peck
Five years after Gov. Mitt Romney signed Massachusetts’ groundbreaking health care legislation, it has met its chief goal of extending insurance coverage to most residents — but with costs rising faster than inflation, lawmakers face the challenge of how to pay for it all.
Although the law has extended coverage, it has done little to fundamentally change the way consumers shop for health care, which analysts say is the only lasting solution to ballooning costs.
Massachusetts’ uninsured rate plunged to the lowest in the nation, from 6.4 percent to 1.9 percent, after the law was enacted in 2006. The rest of the nation averages close to 17 percent. Nearly every child has coverage, and more businesses are offering insurance plans.
At the same time, health care premiums continued to outpace inflation by rising an average of 5 percent to 10 percent each year.
“It’s been very successful in getting people covered,” said Jon Kingsdale, whom Mr. Romney appointed to set up the law’s insurance exchanges, though he also said the trickier issue of bending the health care cost curve remains. “I think, politically, it would have been difficult to enact the law with cost containment - that really means taking money away from the people who save lives.”
Reforming health care in Massachusetts — and the challenges that came with it — foreshadowed President Obama’s health care initiative, which he signed into law last year. The Affordable Care Act closely mirrors Mr. Romney’s overhaul, leaving in place the employer-coverage model butexpanding subsidized coverage.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.
Dadgummit! Every time we institutionalize risk in America, it is a losing financial proposition; and thus endangers us all. Why do we keep doing this? It is stupid and senseless.
Nice going, Mr. Romney. Nothing dropping a huge cow pie on the golden dome and the Bay State.
Dadgummit! Every time we institutionalize risk in America, it is a losing financial proposition; and thus endangers us all. Why do we keep doing this? It is stupid and senseless.
Nice going, Mr. Romney. Nothing like dropping a huge cow pie on the golden dome and the Bay State.
Whoops! How about something completely different, say a real free market for health care?
You could accept cross-state licensing; accept licenses from overseas health care providers now residing in the US; deregulate: accept pharmaceutical approvals from the EU; expand OTC drugs; and deregulate acute care centers; slowly phase out the tax deductiblility of health care, just to name a few.
One thing I've learned is that it's almost completely useless to argue about things like "moral hazard" or "institutionalizing of risk" with liberals. Their ingrained entitlement mentality is like a drug addiction: all they see is the good or service that they want or need and they don't care how they get it. Their first ploy is to guilt-trip others into providing it for them ("I need it, therefore you're obligated to give it to me"); if that fails, their next ploy is simply to take it by force under pretext that providers are "selfish and greedy and not paying their fair share."
When I tell them that the end result of their system is Greece -- a country whose economy is crashing and burning, and which won't pull out of its malaise for at least 10 years -- they say "So?"
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.