It has been 5 years since Mitt Romney signed the Massachusetts universal coverage bill into law. And, although most people in the state now have “coverage,” the health “reform” law has been a miserable failure at controlling costs:
Massachusetts’ uninsured rate plunged to the lowest in the nation … At the same time, health care premiums continued to outpace inflation by rising an average of 5 percent to 10 percent each year.
And one of the justifications used by the advocates of RomneyCare to get it passed was cost control. Now, of course, these same people claim that cost control was never the aim of the program.
But Amy Lischko, the Tufts University professor who was Romney’s health care policy director, says that’s not true and that the law created a panel whose main purpose was to deal with costs:
She saidthe law established a Health Care Quality and Cost Council to recommend cost-cutting strategies for the public and private sectors, but ita ccomplished little and was soon defunded as budgeting became strained.
It was, in other words, a classic Democrat bait-and-switch. After the Democrat legislature tricked Romney into signing this boondoggle, they starved it to death by refusing to fund it.
And, as for all of those newly covered patients, they have no more access care than they had before Romneycare went into effect. A recent study by the Massachusetts Medical Society shows:
Longer patient wait times, continued difficult access to primary care physicians, and gaps in physician acceptance of government coverage.
In other words, Romneycare has failed in all its objectives. Despite the low uninsured rate, patients are not receiving better or even more frequent care. Meanwhile, health care costs rage out of control.
Romneycare is, in short, a fiscal and medical disaster. Thanks Mittens!
[ht Paul Hsieh]
Post a Comment