So You Thought Health Care Was Fixed …

I never thought health care was fixed. 2,000 page documents and how many waivers granted do not a clear path make. This congress is too anti-citizen to create any solid legislation on our behalf.

The government no longer holds an invisible hand of power. They now use not an open palm but a fist. My fourth grader was told that sticky buns are no longer on the cart because "Obama said they aren't good for you." I think the bun might be slightly less harmful than a rogue government. Who works for whom in this country?

This power in government hands is dangerous. That is all. Only an elitist would desire or condone such power over people.

You want to stop bullying in schools? Then stop bullying in the halls of congress and at the White House. Sticky buns aren't the problem. Rogue government is.

Massachusetts premiums down 40% since 2006 ? You need a fact-checker. I live in MA and my premiums have gone up, even after switching to more restrictive plans each year.

Whether constitutional or not, the individual mandate will not work as hoped. Premiums in MA have gone UP since the individual mandate was enacted, up 12% from 2006-2008 according to Massachusett's Division of Health Care Finance and Policy and more since then. Providers are harder to find, waits for appointments are up, so health care quality has gone down for many.

Anyone with the most basic knowledge of economics knows that increasing the demand for a service will increase the price.

Too bad you, like many liberals, have not the faintest idea of how the real world works when you try to institute your do-gooder aims.

The claim by your columnist Fromma Harrop that Massachusetts premiums have been reduced by 40% because of the individual mandate in Romneycare is a total fabrication. Nor have premiums been favorably affected by the slight increase in the number of insured in Massachusetts. She has positioned herself for some time as an expert on healthcare insurance reform. Was she not aware that twice during 2010 Massachusetts froze the healthcare insurance market? No one in Massachusetts could buy insurance in October 2010 and many of us could not buy it in April 2010. Did she think Deval Patrick and his political appointees did that because premiums were dropping?

I contacted the columnist by email to point out the error to her. I even provided her the source document for the official numbers as provided by the State of Massachusetts. The most relevant numbers can be found on page 22 of the Quarterly Key Indicators Report put out by the Massachusetts Department of Healthcare Policy and Finance.

Her response was that her source was an Ezra Klein column in the Washington Post dated December 17 although she gave Klein no credit in the column released earlier on this site. I think it is a little odd that your columnist simply takes facts from another columnist without checking them. It is even odder that she sees his and others' columns before they appear and cribs from them.

These two columnists and others apparently share their columns among each other widely before they are published because the wording from one to another is very similar. For example, David Leonhardt of the NY Times, writing on the same subject – that the individual mandate lowered Massachusetts healthcare insurance premiums -- said on December 14: “Since the state added a mandate in 2006, more people have signed up, and premiums have dropped an average of 40 percent.” Ms. Harrop wrote almost the same words at the same time: “Since it added the mandate in 2006, premiums have fallen 40 percent.” Is that just co-incidence?

But unfortunately for all of us in Massachusetts, Mr. Leonhardt and Mr. Klein are incorrect as well as Ms. Harrop. However Mr. Klein spent enough to time before releasing his column so that we can easily see why they are all in error. He uses a couple of three-year-old reports written at the time Romneycare went into effect. The reports are talking about premiums for individuals in Massachusetts rather than premiums in general in Massachusetts, which is what Ms. Harrop is talking about. But the reports Mr. Klein uses as a source do not relate to the individual mandate in Massachusetts. All they are reflecting is the fact that beginning in 2007, individuals could buy healthcare insurance at the same rate as small groups. That change in community rating procedures had nothing to do with whether the individual was mandated to buy insurance or not, or how many people signed up to buy it (as Mr. Leonhardt contends). It did not even apply to very many people in Massachusetts, a few thousand out of over 6,000,000 that pay healthcare insurance premiums.

And of course it only applied to that one year. After four years of Romneycare, it is clear to all parties that the Romneycare insurance program is an utter disaster. Doctors are giving up practices. Access to healthcare is much more difficult. Healthcare costs as well as premium costs have gone through the roof. Many cuts have been made in coverage (e.g., illegal immigrants). Co-pays and co-insurance amounts are way up. But also unfortunately for all of us in Massachusetts, in reaction the Patrick administration is planning to double down in 2011 by having the government take over healthcare delivery in the same way it so unsuccessfully took over healthcare insurance.

-- Dennis Byron

I have one basic problem with the premise of Ms. Harrop's views toward the dastardly Republicans. It seems to me that she is of the belief that government can fix all our problems better than the private sector. I can't think of a single time that is proven to be true. The health care problem could have been fixed with a single page law. Merely funnel all medical claims into a "single payer" system; farm these claims out to the many insurance companies on a fee basis to check the validity of their claims and then resubmit for payment. Instead of the incentive of the insurance companies to deny claims their incentive would be to ferret out "fraud, waste and abuse" which is what the government, in all endeavors is most adept at. What we have now is a monstrosity that no one understands and which will bankrupt the nation in short order. To blame this all on the shoulders of evil Republicans is to be charitable very simple minded. Can anyone remember when government did anything efficiently? I can't and I worked in state government so I saw it all; the politics, the "waste, fraud and abuse." Anything said to cost something multiply it by a factor of at least three times. What private entity could survive this insanity? This, the Republican's fault? Hardly. I may have been born, but not yesterday.

First of all this is health care insurance reform and has very little to do with providing health care to those most in need. Will probably make it even harder for the poor to get any kind of treatment. Minimum insurance will not provide basic care. Hard to believe that government would embark on a plan before conducting an audit to find out what was causing the high medical costs. Why have these costs (education also) risen at a rate far, far in excess of the cost of living. The current cost for treating the indigent is far cheaper than what has been proposed. Side note: Many seniors are now receiving large premium increases. Guess Joe Wilson was right.