On Sunday The Wall Street Journal posted an article detailing what has happened in Massachusetts since the legislature reformed health care in 2006. It isn’t a pretty picture.
I don’t know if Obamacare was based on what was done in Massachusetts or not, but I do know that what was done in Massachusetts would have been considerably worse if Mitt Romney had not been Governor. Although he was not successful is stopping all of the policies that were put in place, he did stop some of the more drastic ideas. Governor Patrick has worked with the legislature to make things worse.
The article reports:
The claim then, as with the Affordable Care Act, was that health care would be less expensive if everyone had insurance. Soon Massachusetts Democrats leaked that their political strategy all along was to expand coverage only, because had RomneyCare seriously squeezed providers it never would have overcome industry opposition. “Bending the curve” on costs could be saved for another day, once a vast new government liability was locked in.
RomneyCare has increased state health spending in real terms by 59%.
The article also reports:
…79% of the newly insured are on public programs. Health costs—Medicaid, RomneyCare’s subsidies, public-employee compensation—will consume some 54% of the state budget in 2012, up from about 24% in 2001.
Spending on heath care in Massachusetts has increased dramatically since RomneyCare. Heath care costs are 27% higher than the national average–15% higher when adjusted for the states wage scale and academic medical centers and specialists.
Governor Patrick’s latest reforms are aimed at keeping costs down. The article reports:
But Massachusetts takes 360-degree surveillance and converts it into a panopticon prison. An 11-member board known as the Health Policy Commission will use the data to set and enforce rules to ensure that total Massachusetts health spending, public and private, grows no more than projected gross state product through 2017, and 0.5 percentage points lower thereafter. (And Paul Ryan‘s Medicare projections are unrealistic?)
This is the Massachusetts ‘death panel.’
Electing Mitt Romney as President won’t solve the health care problems in Massachusetts (currently being made worse by Governor Patrick), but it will end ObamaCare.
