This patient’s on me
Some quick comments on Massachusetts’ still morphing, mandated, near-universal health care coverage plan.
1) It will cost way more than we’re being told. No surprise there.
2) It’s true that the people who will now get a health care insurance already can access care through emergency rooms. But with the new plan they’ll compete with you for face-time with your primary-care physician. On your dime. Congratulations.
3) Am I understanding it correctly that companies that do provide their employees with health-care insurance will still have to chip in to cover the newly insured? Nuts, if true.
4) Politicians will get three powerful tools to buy votes with the plan:
a) By increasing the number of people who get free or subisdized insurance.
b) By increasing the amount of subsidies.
c) By decreeing cheaper plans or plans that cover more.
5) The plan has components that a Euro-continental conservative (which I’m not) could like, but, and this is important, unlike the Old World’s original welfare systems, this one asks for nothing in return from the underclass that will benefit the most from it. It’s not a social contract, so to speak, just a big give away.
6) I’m guessing we’ll end up with a fully socialist health care system, probably run by a federal judge appointed by himself to undo racial disparities in health care outcomes.
7) Mitt Romney For Anything But President of the United States of America. The plan itself isn’t awful, but it set up to become that in just a few years. Like, after Governor Romney has moved into the White House.
Here’s a Scot Leigh op-ed in the Boston Globe on the health care insurance legislation. Leigh’s normally a pretty sensible middle-of-the-road guy, but this time his piece is devoid of any concerns of how the whole project is actually going to play out in the real world.
