Bad Medicine - What's wrong with RomneyCare

OpinionJournal WSJ ^ | April 12, 2006 | BRENDAN MINITER

[aMorePerfectUnion]

"We insist that everybody who drives a car has insurance. And cars are a lot less expensive than people."

--Gov. Mitt Romney

Massachusetts will likely soon become the first state in the nation to force everyone living within its borders to buy health insurance or pay a tax for walking around uninsured. Gov. Romney says by signing such a mass mandate into law, he will achieve the Democrats' goal of universal health coverage on Republican market-oriented principles.

Uh-huh.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Conclusion says it all: "But Massachusetts' Legislature is unlikely to remove the rules that push up the price of health insurance and is looking instead to cover the working poor the old-fashioned way, with government subsidies. In addition to making health insurance mandatory (taking away tax deductions for those who don't buy insurance), the legislation Gov. Romney is about to sign expands the state's Medicaid rolls, levies a $295 per-employee "fee" on businesses that don't offer health insurance, and sets up a government board to approve new health plans.

The rhetoric from the Bay State's governor notwithstanding, RomneyCare will turn out to be not only expensive but also a mandate for more government spending and more government intrusion."

[flashbunny]

Countdown to the romney fans telling us we just don’t understand...

[aMorePerfectUnion]

No doubt you are right! But they will also have to justify how this monstrosity is conservative...

[Farmer Dean]

What’s wrong with Romneycare?It’s the brainchild of an eastern rino faux conservative.

[gidget7]

This law just went into affect. It will bankrupt a lot of small businesses, drive a lot of larger businesses out of the state. It will cost those who buy their own (also mandated if your employer doesn’t provide it) as much as car insurance does, and since these policies have high co-pays and only after reaching a yearly deductible (also high) no healthy person will ever use it except to have their visits monitored by the insurance co. (Presumably to keep a tally till the deductible is reached) Consequently, they are paying for something, monthly, that they will never use. It’s a forced tax to cover people who go to the ER for a hangnail or every little ache or pain and do not pay for it. Or for those who are self inflicting their own medical needs and cannot pay.

[EGPWS]

...And cars are a lot less expensive than people."

Please define which people you are referencing and the model of car.

[MHGinTN]

How long until the Mormon Romney operatives take over this thread to equate everything not pro-Mormonism as attacking Mormons, the individuals. The strategy for the past months has been to turn every Romney thread into exchanges over Mormonsim and then accuse any opposed to Mormonism of attacking Mormons, thus by inference discussions not fully positive regarding Mormonism will be taboo because they attack Mormons and thus Romney’s Mormonism is off limits. And the platoon of Romneyite Mormons think they’re doing god’s work by triangulating Mormonism to Romney’s advantage.

[SteveMcKing]

Iowa seems OK with it.

[traviskicks]

bookmark

[randita]

Gov. Romney is about to sign expands the state's Medicaid rolls, levies a $295 per-employee "fee" on businesses that don't offer health insurance, and sets up a government board to approve new health plans.

$295 per employee (I assume this is per year) to get out of providing them with health care? That's a bargain! Try to get any kind of coverage as a self-employed person for $295 a year - no way.

Prediction: So many companies are going to pay this fee to get out of providing coverage that they're going to either have to up the fee substantially or raise taxes even more to pay for all the people who will be dumped out of their employee paid health care.

[lowbridge]

And cars are a lot less expensive than people."

Man crashes new $400,000 Lamborghini

[aMorePerfectUnion]

“It will bankrupt a lot of small businesses, drive a lot of larger businesses out of the state. It will cost those who buy their own (also mandated if your employer doesn’t provide it) as much as car insurance does, and since these policies have high co-pays and only after reaching a yearly deductible (also high) no healthy person will ever use it except to have their visits monitored by the insurance co. (Presumably to keep a tally till the deductible is reached) Consequently, they are paying for something, monthly, that they will never use. It’s a forced tax to cover people who go to the ER for a hangnail or every little ache or pain and do not pay for it. Or for those who are self inflicting their own medical needs and cannot pay.”

WAIT! I thought Mitt was a conservative??

[Signalman]

Well, you’’ve got

1. Romney-care which, at least, requires individuals to have private insurance.

Or you have

2. Hillary-care which is total socialized medicine with the government bureaucrats running the system and extracting money from the taxpayers to fund it.

To me, Option 1 is a whole lot more palatable.

[lowbridge]

Where is it written that we have to have a choice between one or two and no others?

How about choice number 3: We are neither required to buy insurance (private or otherwise), nor have socialized government run medicine forced down our throats.

[greyfoxx39]

FIPing

[slowhandluke]

Prediction: So many companies are going to pay this fee to get out of providing coverage that they're going to either have to up the fee substantially or raise taxes even more to pay for all the people who will be dumped out of their employee paid health care.

Exactly! This is the 'worse-is-better' dialetic. In order to make government health care a reality, every competing method of providing health care must be ruined. Eventually, the cost of the the system will be come so burdensome, that the government drones will declare it 'unfair' that some folks have lower priced private insurance with better coverage, or that some folks can afford to do without insurance. Everybody will be forced to pay in.

Later, the optional 'kill-the-rich' stage (follows the 'soak-the-rich' stage sometimes) might show up, where it's unfair that the rich still have so much money after paying in, and they will still pay, but will be kicked out of the benefit pool.

[tiger-one]

If I ran a company in Mass, the fee would come from my employees as a reduction in their pay. Then they can call “Coupe Deval” the new Gov of Mass and bitch to him.

[randita]

Later, the optional 'kill-the-rich' stage (follows the 'soak-the-rich' stage sometimes) might show up, where it's unfair that the rich still have so much money after paying in, and they will still pay, but will be kicked out of the benefit pool.

This hasn't happened yet with Social Security and Medicare, but does anyone doubt that it will eventually? It has to as current benefits cannot continue to be paid to ever increasing beneficiaries.

You have only three choices to continue the status quo - increase payroll taxes or cut benefits or do a combination of both.

None of those choices will be palatable to a a future voting public but today's politicians who have made all the pie in the sky promises will have served their terms long enough to collect all the government benefits allowed them and be comfortably out to pasture before the s$%t hits the fan.

[tiger-one]

This is link to the Mass statues for Romney Care. It creates government jobs with new committees, builds more opportunity for corruption, as if Mass does not have enough and was never voted on by the tax payers.

http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/gl-176q-toc.htm

[randita]

If I ran a company in Mass, the fee would come from my employees as a reduction in their pay.

You'd never get away with cutting pay, but through the wonderful base line budgeting system we've learned to know and love, you can just decrease their level of pay increase proportionately and get the same result.