>*This article appeared in Detroit News on August 27, 2009.
Michael F. Cannon is director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute and co-author of Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It.
https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10488
some points…
If you are curious about how President Barack Obama’s health plan would affect your health care, look no farther than Massachusetts. In 2006, the Bay State enacted a slate of reforms that almost perfectly mirror the plan of Obama and congressional Democrats.
Those reforms reveal that the Obama plan would mean higher health insurance premiums for millions, would reduce choice by eliminating both low-cost and comprehensive health plans, would encourage insurers to avoid the sick and would reduce the quality of care.
Massachusetts reduced its uninsured population by two-thirds — yet the cost would be considered staggering, had state officials not done such a good job of hiding it. Finally, Massachusetts shows where “ObamaCare” would ultimately lead: Officials are already laying the groundwork for government rationing…
The most sweeping provision in the Massachusetts reforms — and the legislation before Congress — is an “individual mandate” that makes health insurance compulsory. Massachusetts shows that such a mandate would oust millions from their low-cost health plans and force them to pay higher premiums.
“The effect,” writes the Boston Globe, “has been to provide more comprehensive insurance than in most other states but also to raise costs.” Premiums are growing 21to 46 percent faster than the national average, in part because Massachusetts’ individual mandate has effectively outlawed affordable health plans.
Over time, as mandates eliminate low-cost options and price controls eliminate comprehensive options, both the Massachusetts and Obama reforms will march consumers into a narrow range of health plans.
As goes choice, so goes quality. Statistics on waiting times for specialist care in Massachusetts read like a dispatch from Canada. In 2004, Boston already had the longest waits among metropolitan areas. By 2009, waits had generally shortened in other metro areas (average wait: less than three weeks) but lengthened in Boston (average wait: seven weeks), according to the Merritt Hawkins survey.
Voters who believe the Massachusetts law reduced the quality of care outnumber those who believe it helped by nearly 3-to-1 (29 percent to 10 percent).
Massachusetts has reduced the share of its population that lacks coverage from an estimated 8.3 percent in 2006 to an estimated 2.6 percent by June 2008. Former Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican who signed the Massachusetts reforms into law, boasts that “no other state has made as much progress in covering their uninsured.”
Yet that achievement carries an exorbitant price tag: at least $2.1 billion this year, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a figure that doesn’t even include the cost of the additional coverage discussed above. Since Massachusetts has covered just 432,000 previously uninsured residents, the cost of covering a previously uninsured family of four — at least $20,000 — is well above the average cost of an employer-sponsored family policy (about $13,000).
https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10488
