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March 28, 2009
The 'Reality' of Universal Coverage
Topics: Political News and commentariesAs an editorial yesterday in the WSJ explains, to learn what the universal coverage scheme the congressional democrats are trying to "foist on the rest of us" will do to our medical care, we need only look to a "perfect microcosm" of their plan - the universal-coverage scheme Massachusetts enacted in 2006. As it's turning out, the Massachusetts plan is proving to be instructive on what President Obama, Max Baucus, Ted Kennedy, Pete Stark, and the Democrat leadership are cooking up for everyone else: Higher taxes and government rationing:
[...] 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.The editors go on to conclude (emphasis mine):[...] The state's overall costs on health programs have increased by 42% (!) since 2006.
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.
So earlier this year, [Gov. Deval] Patrick appointed a state commission to figure out how to control costs and preserve "this grand experiment"...
The Patrick panel is considering one option to "exclude coverage of services of low priority/low value." Another would "limit coverage to services that produce the highest value when considering both clinical effectiveness and cost." (Guess who would determine what is high or low value? Not patients or doctors.) Yet another is "a limitation on the total amount of money available for health care services," i.e., an overall spending cap...
[Patrick] reportedly told insurers and hospitals at a closed meeting this month that if they didn't take steps to hold down the rate of medical inflation, he would.
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Democrats are about to try their own Bay State bait and switch: First create vast new entitlements that can never be repealed, then later take the less popular step of rationing care when it's their last hope to save the federal fisc.Take the time to read the entire article and learn more about the "bait and switch" of universal health care: Creating vast new entitlements that can never be repealed, then later taking the less popular step of rationing care "when it's their last hope to save the federal fisc." We don't need another "grand experiment," Massachusetts (and Hawaii) have already provided it and we know it fails miserably.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.
HT - Cato@Liberty
Posted by Hyscience at March 28, 2009 8:58 AM
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