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Posted on 07/08/2009 6:38:37 PM PDT by ellery
BOSTON (Reuters) - Within Washington's tangled debate over how to reform healthcare, many are looking to Massachusetts, a state that could offer both a way forward and a warning.
As President Barack Obama and Congress work to revamp a wasteful national system which leaves millions uninsured, attention has turned to Massachusetts' ambitious three-year-old program to cover almost all of its 6.4 million people.
Rick Lord, a member of the Massachusetts system's oversight board, last month met with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at Harvard University, and he's also been asked to speak at U.S. Senate hearings.
The program, which is facing a sharp rise in costs as it struggles to provide universal access at a time of economic decline, has a bipartisan heritage.
It was the legacy of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, runner-up for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and a likely presidential candidate in 2012.
But it was also championed by the liberal Massachusetts Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy, a national leader on health issues, who, with other congressional Democrats, is advocating reform plans inspired by the Massachusetts model.
Several plans for reforming the national system include the requirement, in place in Massachusetts, that individuals buy health insurance, just as they must buy auto insurance.
President Barack Obama opposed the idea during his campaign against Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic presidential nominee last year, but has since signaled he'll sign such a measure if it is passed by Congress.
"If you went back five years, you would never be discussing an individual mandate, but it has become a standard part of the national discussion" because of Massachusetts, said Stuart Altman, a Brandeis University healthcare professor who advised Obama during the campaign.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Thanks a million for setting the precedent, Romney.
libertarian and nanny-state pings...
I have heard that there is some real trouble such as rationing.
There’s no way to avoid rationing under such a system, I don’t think. Basic economics.
Of course, the governors and legislators who pass this garbage don’t have to worry about that.
Refer to it as MengeleCare or AuschwitzCare for they are intended just the same. The government wants to pick who lives and who dies. Yes, that means it could be you!
Yikes. Good point.
I haven’t heard those complaints yet, but f*c* no, WE DO NOT want this on a national level.
Typical.
However, the plan, similar to MassCare in Massachusetts, has its skeptics. Massachusetts State Treasurer Timothy Cahill says the national recession has placed financial stress on MassCare.
“The system was expensive, even in good times,” he said. “In tough times it just doesn’t seem doable. We’re all still waiting for the savings.”
Though 432,000 Bay Staters previously without insurance are now covered, many of the newly insured still can’t access medical care. Sally Pipes, president and CEO of Pacific Research Institute and author of “The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care,” writes in the Washington Examiner that over the last 12 months about 10 percent of state residents failed to fill prescriptions. They also missed payments on medical bills or skipped essential medical care.
Harvard Medical School Professor David Himmelstein believes patients are spending so much money on coverage they can’t afford the most basic medical services. The least expensive policy for a young family in Massachusetts costs $9,500 a year. That family has to pay a $3,500 deductible before many of the benefits kick in. Because of these costs, 23 percent of the patient population still relies on emergency room care for basic medical treatment, a problem MassCare was expected to solve.
http://www.newbritainherald.com/articles/2009/07/08/news/doc4a5403a758dcb450641130.txt
I guess when Mitt says 'covered' he means in a theoretical, bureaucratic, tax/fine/fee way, not a performance/outcome way.
Tennessee’s TennCare was much ballyhooed when they were trying to pass HillaryCare, but now it’s broke and they don’t talk about it so much anymore.
That’s very interesting, considering that the biggest argument of the RomneyCare supporters is the decrease in ER expenditures.
Yep. Cahill has been sceptical of this plan all along. I might vote for him.
Romney’s plan sucks, plain and simple.
It wasn’t as if there were boat loads of doctors hanging around, that were trolling for patients.
I’m reminded of a story from the Soviet Union days where one of the, ahem, ‘leaders’ wanted crop yields up so he ordered the production of fertilizer to be doubled, which ate up fuel, so there even less fuel to deliver the doubled amount of fertilizer which was then just dumped in the river, polluting the river and killing fish which people depended upon to supplement their diet. The crops did not increase, and the rivers got polluted.
It will metastasize into something worse. What, I don’t know. Kind of like cancer cells in your blood stream. No telling what will go south.
My betting hunches. Increased cost, decreased quality, longer delays, political infighting, years of ‘reforms’ of the previous ‘reforms’ which were the reforms of the reforms of the reforms of the first form. Best and brightest flee, unsung cadre of assistants, nurses and other caregivers flee/decline/are imported...
You don’t here the lefties talk about ‘Slum Clearance’, ‘Urban Renewal’ or ‘Model Cities’ all union/contractor scams lasting decades and paying out trillions of dollars to the connected.
Look at Canada and Great Britain. There are people in Canada who have cancer getting treatment here because of their are placed on a waiting list
bump!
That's a very funny picture BTW.
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