Massachusetts Plan Fails; Ready for Obamacare?

Massachusetts' health initiative, called Commonwealth Care, has so far failed on all fronts, and now Obama and company have legislation in the works (see Baucus, Max, and Kennedy, Ted) that virtually mirrors the abysmal failure of Mitt Romney's plan (which Romney now repudiates, but probably for presidential aspiration purposes only).

Writing for Boston.com, Suzanne L. King, a physician who practices medicine in Massachusetts, grades Commonwealth Care against the five standards established by the Institute of Medicine; to wit, coverage should be universal, not tied to a job, affordable for individuals and families, affordable for society, and accessible by all.

On number one, Massachusetts' plan is not universal, still missing a few hundred thousand residents. On number two, it retains its reliance on employer-funded insurance while incorporating an individual mandate (see Baucus, Max, and Kennedy, Ted, and soon Obama, Barack). On three, Dr. King writes, "For an individual earning $31,213, the cheapest plan can cost $9,872 in premiums and out-of-pocket payments." Also, co-pays are so high that many can't afford to see a doctor. On four, state costs have soared from $630 million a year to $1.3 billion are are still rising (a lot of the money goes to subsidizing people who can't afford to buy health insurance). And on five, accessibility, the answer segues from four--not only are co-pays expensive, but deductibles are too high in many cases.

Dr. King's solution, and here many might disagree, is just to get rid of private insurance and extend Medicare to everyone. My thought is that Medicare is the 800-pound gorilla already shifting costs from subsidized patients to paying patients, from Medicare to private insurers. Since Medicare doesn't pay all that it costs for the services and procedures it covers, those under private insurance make up the different in higher doctor and hospital fees.

Anyway, be prepared for some form of the failed Massachusetts plan to become the law of the land--and for your health care (unless you're poor and subsidized) to become both costlier and less affordable.

Maybe the key to surviving in our new day and age is just to become poor and a ward of the state. I sure hope not.

Analysis Correct, But What Aren't They Telling Us?

A group calling itself Physicians for National Health Program (PNHP) has issued a press release revealing the failure of Hillarycare as it was resurrected in Massachusetts by former Governor Mitt Romney (who somehow has now seen the light of his transgressions from Republican orthodoxy).

Costs are up, services are hard to get, the state is going broke, and what was once free for the indigent now costs them money--that's the Massachusetts health care plan implemented in 2006.

So far, so good--these are the inevitable results of government interference in the free market. (Watch for higher costs and more rationing coming down the pike soon.)

However, PNHP then advocates the adoption of a single-payer national health care system "while maintaining the private delivery system." This plan is embodied in H.R. 676, the so-called United States National Health Care Act.

The group claims implementation of H.R. 676 would save Massachusetts alone "about $8 billion to $10 billion a year in reduced administrative costs," but it fails to say how except that it would eliminate (now, really?) the 31-percent administrative fees built into private insurance plans. Eliminate some admin costs, yes, but all, no, but PNHP never goes into detail.

Also, how does this differ from just putting everyone on Medicare? No clue in the press release.

What H.R. 676 really amounts to is a massive "fee-for-service" cash grab by the physicians of America who, once they got their hands on an "unlimited" federal money spigot, would open the valve as wide as possible with a) more patients and b) more services for every patient they see.

Unless they can provide better details than this crappy press release does, these physicians need to go back to the drawing board--and figure out how they can see more patients for the same, or less, than they do now.

Otherwise, it's just more greedy pigs lining up at the federal trough (see banks, the Big Three, the states, housing, unions, etc.).