The release of a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the impact of the Senate's version of health care reform has Republicans saying the report proves the bill would increase insurance premiums for most Americans, and the Democrats saying the report proves the bill would result in lower premiums for most Americans. The FoxNews.com article on the conflicting interpretations contained this gem: "The logical gap between Democratic leaders' statements and McConnell's is yet another example of how the CBO reports, despite their high level of detail, have become the budgetary equivalent of Rorschach tests in the health care debate--with both parties seeing what they want."
Here in Massachusetts, Governor Mitt Romney and the Democratic leaders of the state legislature all claimed in 2006 that the Commonwealth's overhaul of health care would reduce costs. It didn't. "Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced," Romney bragged in the Wall Street Journal the day before he signed legislation that did no such thing.
Massachusetts has the highest health care costs in the United States (and the U.S. has the highest in the world). This isn't entirely a bad thing. You get what you pay for, and when you pay more you get better. But given that the raison d'etre of the U.S. Senate's bill is to reduce costs--it's called the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," after all--one would think Massachusetts would prove a cautionary tale warning against the very policies within the Senate bill. Alas, just like the CBO's oracular analysis, partisans read whatever set of facts that suits them into the Reverse Massachusetts Miracle signed into law by Mitt Romney almost four years ago.
What has really happened in Massachusetts? Since 2006, costs have increased 28 percent. Next year, Bay State residents should expect their premiums to rise by another 10 percent, according to top insurers surveyed by the Boston Globe. Despite increased contributions by patients and the state, RomneyCare has stiffed hospitals with the bill for the care of the indigent. Six Massachusetts hospitals will file a joint lawsuit today against the state for sticking them with the bill for the care of individuals ostensibly covered by government plans.
Is there any doubt the effect on costs by the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" will be similarly inflationary? The bill artificially increases the demand for health insurance by making it the only product in the United States of America that consumers must purchase under penalty of law. It pays for its dream of universal health care by levying huge taxes upon health insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and medical device makers, who will in turn pass those costs on to consumers. And it provides, through partial or full taxpayer subsidy, health insurance to 31 million people who currently don't have health insurance. All of these inflationary elements--mandated insurance, taxes upon health providers, and taxpayer subsidy to the uninsured--were part of RomneyCare, which wildly boosted the cost of health care in Massachusetts. Why will partaking in this same plan on a national basis reap a different harvest than experienced in Massachusetts?
The states are said to be "laboratories of democracy." If so, then what does it foretell about ObamaCare that it bases so much--from mandating insurance to offering a state-run option--on the failed experiment in Massachusetts?
My only quarrel is with the 31 million number. Spinning Democrats and querulous Republicans have repeated this number but two CBO directors in a row have put it closer to 10-15 million.
Hey Dan, do you agree with the surge? If i remember Afgan was the good war right?
The Massachusetts scheme is a mechanism for upward wealth redistribution. It functions in the same way TARP, foreign wars, and other subsidies work: funnel taxpayer dollars to wealthy sectors, like KBR or Diane Feinstein's Carlyle Group.
Welcome to the conservative nanny state, 1981 - present.
