Patterico's Pontifications

4/4/2006

The Future of Healthcare?

Filed under: General,Law,Politics — SoCalLawyer @ 7:49 pm



[Posted by SoCalLawyer]

Yahoo! News reports:

Massachusetts lawmakers overwhelmingly approved an ambitious health-care bill on Tuesday that would make it the first U.S. state to require nearly all residents to be insured or face penalties.

The bill, which comes as traditional employer-based coverage is shrinking nationwide, will provide health care to about 95 percent of the state’s half million uninsured residents by 2009, state officials said.

The Massachusetts policy holds both businesses and employees responsible for health care coverage. Businesses with more than 10 employees that do not provide coverage for all staff must pay a $295 fee annually per uninsured worker.

Under the legislation, which is expected to be approved by Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, insurance agencies would expand health care coverage by offering state-subsidized, low-cost insurance plans with scaled-back benefits.

Romney, a Republican who may run for president in 2008, has indicated he would sign the bill into law.

SoCalLawyer

15 Responses to “The Future of Healthcare?”

  1. This will be an interesting experiment to track, but I don’t know if it is feasible on a national level. Massachusetts has a relatively high ratio of doctors to citizens (largely due to the number of medical schools in the Bay State), so they would be less likely to run into the problems of rationing that states with lower doctor-to-citizen ratios would encounter. You would probably be pretty upset at being forced to purchase an insurance plan if you couldn’t get your bypass scheduled for another ten weeks.

    JVW (d667c9)

  2. The challenge will be to maintain the scaled-back nature of the plan. Over a period of years, coverage is likely to be expanded by legislators and judges responding to those sufering from particular maladies or those making money from paricular treatments. E.g., chiropractors have lobbied effectively to be treated equal to doctors for Workers Compensation purposes — adding hugely to the costs. There are examples of laws and judicial decisions requiring that health insurance cover various specific items.

    David (b60c38)

  3. I have to applaud Mass. for their action on this issue. I have always maintained that subsidized Health Insurance is the answer to our healthcare problem. It eliminates cost shifting [when coverage is universal] Increases appropriate use of ER’s and Hospitals as well as helping practitioners to be proactive in the healthcare of the low income/indigent population. Go Mitt!

    paul (001f65)

  4. A bad plan, which will be fixed into just the horror they claim to have avoided. $295 a year for companies that don’t offer health plans? That’s less than a month of the chintziest health plan available — so they’ll raise this to thousands before it has effect. Everything else will cost more, have more bureaucrats, more control, long waits, and be less available than they claim.

    And of course, “bad people” (smokers, fat people, motorcycle riders, etc) will find their life styles under attack less “they overburden the state’s largess.”

    Kevin Murphy (6a7945)

  5. If the cost of this health plan does increase substantially, then it will have an impact on the formation of new business. I recall talking to the President of a sister company near Boston He had a problem, which led to the loss of his job. The parent company absolutely prohibited paying bribes, but this President said that bribes to local pols were a necessity of being in business there.

    Adding a health care burden to the cost of a corrupt environment makes Mass. an undesirable place to start or expand a business, given a choice. Mass. already has a slightly higher unemployment rate than the country as a whole. It will be interesting to see if this difference grows.

    David (8741ca)

  6. Former Gov. Mike Dukakis tried to do this before his presidential run. It was another single-payer system. It was passed, signed into law, and then died.

    Just like this one will.

    Former MA state resident (31a451)

  7. The only way this can hope to succeed is if it includes an absolute, irrevocable, unmodifiable cost limits, with poison-pill provisions to automatically terminate the program if said limits are exceeded.
    Since it doesn’t, it [that is, the program or the State of Massachusets] will crash and burn, particularly because of the concerns raised by David and Kevin Murphy.

    great unknown (71415b)

  8. I still find it interesting that people consider healthcare a right of some sort. I think any attempt at forcing healthcare coverage is going to fail, though it will be interesting to watch to see the outcome in Mass.

    galletador (b58eba)

  9. The bill also forces those who can afford insurance to buy it whether they want to or not. Does anyone else find it sort of odd that the people’s rep. of MA is forcing its residents to spend their money the way the legislature sees fit?

    JOe (c83ab5)

  10. Bad move, Governor Mitt, and unnecessary too. I am tired of the conflation of no medical insurance with no medical care. Why do politicians think that they know how to best organize anything and so disparage anyone with real life experience supplying the goods or services being discussed? What is so sacred about government that it must always butt into every aspect of life, and that its programs must never be terminated?

    Charles D. Quarles (df82ab)

  11. Look Inside To Discover How To Butea Superba

    Butea Superba (20ce72)

  12. Hi .. this is a brilliant find. Thanks for
    sharing the great info with me.
    Looking forward to more updates from you.

    Alzheimers and Dementia (6bec34)

  13. Hi, I’m new here, I find this blog very interesting! I’m definitely going to bookmark this site! I look forward to contributing.
    Motor Scooters

    Brian Keith (78a2ac)

  14. Jack…

    you have a very nice blog and very informative article…

    Jack (e0a6b3)

  15. Warning! Spambot sited. Target designation: Jack. Decision: Destroy.

    Spam Alert! (92b8f7)


Powered by WordPress.

Page loaded in: 0.0869 secs.