Patient Power

Mandated insurance…runaway costs…price controls, political rationing

The Wall Street Journal’s commentary on Massachusetts-style government-run medicine and how it’s a model for a national disaster.  So snippets:

In Massachusetts’s latest crisis, Governor Deval Patrick and his Democratic colleagues are starting to move down the path that government health plans always follow when spending collides with reality — i.e., price controls. As costs continue to rise, the inevitable results are coverage restrictions and waiting periods. It was only a matter of time. …

Like gamblers doubling down on their losses, Democrats have already hiked the fines for people who don’t obtain insurance under the “individual mandate,” already increased business penalties, taxed insurers and hospitals, raised premiums, and pumped up the state tobacco levy. That’s still not enough money. …

Which brings us to Washington, where Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats are about to try their own Bay State bait and switch: First create vast new entitlements that can never be repealed, then later take the less popular step of rationing care when it’s their last hope to save the federal fisc.

The consequences of that deception will be far worse than those in Massachusetts, however, given that prior to 2006 the state already had a far smaller percentage of its population uninsured than the national average. The real lesson of Massachusetts is that reform proponents won’t tell Americans the truth about what “universal” coverage really means: Runaway costs followed by price controls and bureaucratic rationing.

Read the article here.

(via FIRM)

• Mandatory insurance: higher costs, less care, rights violations, & rationing
• Obama Care will emulate Massachusetts’ health “reform” failure
• What the Failure of the “Massachusetts Model” Tells Us about Health Care Reform
• Obama Care: encourage insurers to avoid the sick, cater to healthy
• The conceit of Obama’s insurance price controls