Who Didn’t See This Coming?
by Big Dog on Nov 17, 2006 at 23:08 Political
Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney had this wonderful idea to provide health care for everyone. The law that he enacted would require everyone in Massachusetts to have health care. People with work health plans had to sign up and those who did not have health care would sign up for government sponsored health care. Of course, the burden of paying for it fell on business and taxpayers. The increase was only supposed to be minimal (as if any program that costs millions of dollars can be minimal)and everyone would be happy.
Unfortunately, the program will cost a lot more than originally predicted. Once again, a government sponsored program costs a lot more money than what people were told. How many times are people going to be sold a bill of goods before they wise up? According to medilexicon:
Officials of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R) administration are “now telling Wall Street that they expect” the state’s new law requiring all residents to obtain health insurance by July 1, 2007, “to be quite expensive,” even though “supporters promised that health insurance could be provided with only a slight increase in expenditures,” Sally Pipes, president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute, writes in a Washington Times opinion piece. According to Pipes, officials now say “the new plan will increase Massachusetts government health spending by $276.4 million in 2007” — a $151 million increase “over what the public was told the plan would cost as recently as April.”
~snip~
“Although federal taxpayers are expected to pick up some of this tab, the majority of it will fall on Bay State taxpayers.” She notes that some families will be expected to pay up to 7.7% of their annual income on subsidized health insurance, making it “hard to see how the state will get even close to the 100% participation rate.” In addition, the $295 per employee contribution “ceiling” being imposed on employers to help fund the plan will likely “prove to be a floor” because “the extra money must come from somewhere,” and “[s]tate activists, legislat[ors] and the Democratic gubernatorial hopeful are already grumbling that businesses need to pay more,” according to Pipes (Pipes, Washington Times, 11/5).
This is a perfect example of why the government does not belong in things that should be taken care of by the free market. There are uninsured people and some of those are the young who choose not to have money taken out of their pay because they feel they are young and healthy. There are others who just do not want to pay for it and then there are those who are indigent and can not afford it. In reality, no one will go without health care because those who do not have it use the emergency room as their primary care. This is not right but it is also not right to say people can not get care.
With the Democrats in charge again universal health care will be making a resurgence and this plan is one they have lauded as a good one. They are unconvinced that social medicine programs do not work. Despite the fact that they are terrible in countries that implement social medicine, the Democrats are convinced that they can do it right. No matter what plan they come up with, it will be terribly run, overstaffed with bureaucrats and inefficient. No government program ever runs efficiently.
The cost of health care would decline of the lawsuits declined. Companies must charge a fortune for medications to recoup the R&D costs and to cover litigation. Doctors are being sued all the time and juries dole out extraordinarily high monetary damage awards. We need tort reform and we need ordinary citizens to be able to group together to get lower group rates for insurance. Small businesses should be able to go in together as a group to get rates that larger companies get.
We could, however put a dent in the cost of health care for people by making politicians spend half of their campaign money on it. They spent 2,8 billion dollars on the last election. Forcing them to pay half would put 1.4 billion dollars in health care. They won’t do that because they do not want to spend their money on things, just yours and mine.
[tags]Health care,Massachusetts,uninsured,doctors, nurses,taxes,Big Dog[/tags]
Thank you for the heads-up. He will never get my vote. I don’t care. I will not vote for a RINO that endorses Hillary-care!