Here is a different take on the forced-healthcare bill that is about to become law in Massachusetts from IBD. While I am against government dictation of any aspect of our lives other than deliberate criminal offenses (murder, stealing, deliberate dumping of industrial toxins into the environment), it is naive to think that any government will refuse to bail out the irresponsible of our society with so many lib's in power. This move at least is being done at the State-level which is always preferred over a federal regulation:
Posted 4/5/2006
Health Care:
Massachusetts lawmakers have passed a universal-coverage bill. Republican Gov. Mitt Romney plans to sign it. Has Romney flipped? Not at all. He has won a victory for market-based reform.
That victory might not look so impressive, say, in a deep red state like Utah. But in a state dominated by liberal Democrats, where the governor likens himself to a "red dot" in a liberal sea, the bill that passed on Tuesday with huge, bipartisan majorities has to be seen as a big step forward.
Remember, Massachusetts is Ted Kennedy country, the state most inclined to go toward single-payer (government-run) health care. Under Romney's leadership, it's been playing against type.
Its universal-coverage plan, which Romney has said he'll sign with some tweaking, could serve as at least a rough model for market-based, consumer-driven reform of health care nationwide.
The headline feature of the Bay State scheme is its insurance mandate aimed at the financially able. State experts estimate that some 200,000 of the roughly 550,000 uninsured in Massachusetts make enough money to buy coverage in the private insurance market without government help. They will face rising tax penalties if they don't have a policy by July 1, 2007.
Most of the remaining uninsured will get means-based subsidies to buy employer-based or other private plans, with children covered by Medicaid. The legislation also requires employers not providing health insurance to pay a $295 annual fee per employee, but Romney says he may veto that part of the bill.
The plan is not cheap, and states that do not already spend liberally on health care or that have a higher share of uninsured residents may have trouble matching Massachusetts' subsidies.
But the idea of requiring insurance of those with the ability to pay does not require lavish state aid. By making young and healthy people buy insurance, it directly attacks the problem of adverse selection — the buying of insurance only by the highest-risk customers (or in the case of health insurance, the sickest and oldest).
It also prevents the free-riding that forces taxpayers and providers to pick up the tab for unreimbursed care they provide to the uninsured. Such coverage basically covers everyone, but in the most expensive way possible — at hospital emergency rooms rather than doctors' offices, for instance — and the costs are borne disproportionately by individual hospitals and by taxpayers.
Some might argue, perhaps rightly, that an insurance mandate is in a sense an infringement on personal freedom. It also requires people to act responsibly and pay their way. If everyone were doing so now, such a rule wouldn't be needed.
The Massachusetts plan isn't perfect, and needs improvement. Already, the employer fee looks like a political sop to liberals rather than a needed element. Also, the state faces a challenge in making an inefficient private insurance market transparent for hundreds of thousands of new customers who will be shopping for policies.
The key point is that the plan relies on consumers in a market, underdeveloped as it is, rather than seeking to replace private insurance and dictate private care through government fiat. Mittcare, if that's what it is to be called, is a far cry from Hillarycare.
That counts as progress, especially in the bluest of blue states.
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