Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Who saw this coming? "Spiraling costs" in mandated Bay State health care

Via Q&O, here's Bizzy Blog with "The Romney Care crackup is coming early"

After one year, Commonwealth Care (aka RomneyCare) in Massachusetts is imploding even earlier than I predicted, due to "spiraling costs." Punitive fines of $912 - $1,824 are to be imposed on those who would rather not participate in the so-called "grand experiment."
Those spoil-sports are the young and healthy who either cannot afford health care or, through some alien concept previous known as "freedom", don't choose to subsidize the Commonwealth's health care system. Tom Maguire encapsulated the issue while writing about the nearly-identical HillaryCare program:

The speaker...was extolling the virtue of Hillary's health care plan, specifically her mandate that everyone must buy insurance or face the (as yet unspecified) consequences. And why is the mandate, which is missing from Obama's plan, so important? Because otherwise, she explained, healthy people, most likely healthy young people, would prefer not to buy insurance; if they don't participate, the cost rises for everyone else.

Hmm - put another way (OK, almost exactly the same way), young healthy people need to be forced to buy health insurance in order to subsidize the old, obese, and infirm.
Just today I received my Massachusetts Resident Income Tax Forms and emblazoned on the front cover is "This year Massachusetts requires that you file the new health care schedule." Or else, citizen, or else.

1 comment:

skeneogden said...

With Schwartenegger Care becoming a distinct possibility here in the Golden State (you need a lot of gold to live here) I have been viewing with trepidation the problems with Romney Care. If a state the size of Massachusetts can't manage health care imagine the nightmare scenario here in California. I'm hoping the electorate will come to its collective senses when this issue comes up on the ballot, however anything is possible here in the state of the insensible.