[Vision2020] Mass. Succeeds with its Health Care Plan

[Tom Hansen]

Cool!

Thanks, Nick.

I'm guessing that by the first presidential debate McCain will adopt 
Obama's concept for health care and present it as his own, and then accuse 
Obama of stealing the idea from him.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

> Greetings:
> 
> This plan is very much like what Obama is proposing.  McCain's plan--
I'll be writing a
column about it--is an absolute disaster.
> 
> Mitt Romney, who got it going when he was governor, is now praising his 
own plan.  He had
to diss it while running for president!
> 
> Nick Gier
> 
> August 30, 2008
> Editorial, The New York Times
> The Massachusetts Way
> 
> The pioneering Massachusetts program to provide health insurance for all 
citizens looks
more and more successful with each passing month.
> 
> The number of uninsured has dropped — Massachusetts now has the lowest 
rate in the
nation — and so have the number of those who turn to costly emergency 
rooms for routine
care. And while the state has had to seek additional sources of revenue 
— mainly because
of the program’s popularity — the gains in the first 21 months suggest 
that the plan
could become a model for universal health coverage for other states or the 
nation.
> 
> Massachusetts enacted its ambitious health insurance reform two years 
ago under bipartisan
leadership from then-Gov. Mitt Romney and a Democratic Legislature. 
Although Mr. Romney
distanced himself from the plan during the Republican primaries, he was 
back to extolling
its virtues in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal last month.
> 
> The plan requires everyone to take out health insurance or suffer a tax 
penalty and
requires employers to offer coverage or pay a small assessment if they 
don’t. Low-income
residents can enroll in an expanded state-federal Medicaid program or 
receive subsidies to
pay all or part of the premiums for private insurance. Those who earn more 
than 300
percent of the federal poverty level (about $63,000 for a family of four) 
receive no
subsidy but can buy private policies through a new insurance exchange at 
much lower rates
than before.
> 
> More than 439,000 people have taken out coverage since the program began 
in mid-2006 —
two-thirds of the estimated 650,000 who lacked health insurance when the 
program began.
> 
> More than 40 percent of the newly insured purchased private commercial 
policies without
any government subsidies, defying dire predictions that employers would 
drop their plans
and a horde of individuals would drop private policies. What seems to be 
happening instead
is that workers who previously shunned their employers’ plans have 
decided to sign up
now that insurance is required.
> 
> The big expansion in coverage has yielded a commensurate drop in the 
number of “free
riders,” those who use hospital emergency rooms and community health 
centers for routine
care that they don’t pay for. The cost of that uncompensated care 
dropped from $166
million in the first quarter of fiscal 2007 to $98 million in the first 
quarter of 2008.
> 
> Far more people have enrolled far more quickly than expected, driving up 
the total budget
for subsidized care beyond Medicaid to $869 million in the next fiscal 
year, about half of
which will be absorbed by the state and the other half by redirected 
federal funds. The
cost per person is actually less than expected. The program to date is 
fully financed.
> 
> That may still look like a lot of money, but universal coverage is 
vitally important to
enhance the health of previously uninsured citizens. In the long run, full 
coverage should
serve as a springboard toward reforming the health care system to deliver 
higher quality,
more cost-effective care.
> 
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students are not very active in local elections (thank goodness!)."

- Dale Courtney (March 28, 2007)


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