Save America

Thursday, March 4, 2010 By Michael Graham

Romneycare Model a Dud

So this is what it looks like when a mild-mannered, liberal community activist goes “nuclear.”
President Barack Obama didn’t use the “n” word – or even the “r” word, “reconciliation.” But he made it clear he’s ready to go to Democrat DefCon4, give the partisan launch codes and inflict Obamacare on the American people at any political cost.
In defending his decision to go nuclear, Obama talked about insurance company “abuses.” He talked about premium hikes in California. He talked about a sick mom in Wisconsin. He even talked (in extremely modest ways) about Republican ideas like tort reform and fighting Medicare fraud.
What Obama didn’t mention was Massachusetts.
In fact, despite having given (based on my calculations) some 57,432 speeches, press conferences, pep talks, pillow talks and interpretive dances on health care in the past 12 months, Obama somehow manages to leave us out of nearly every conversation.
This is telling, because we’re the one state already glowing in the radioactive haze of Romneycare, aka “ObamaCare: The Beta Version.”
Shouldn’t Obama have been bragging yesterday about bringing the benefits of Bay State reform to all of America?
As we prepare to wander into this coming nuclear winter of hyper-partisan politics – one in which we’re almost certain to see widespread political fatalities among congressional Democrats – I have to ask: If bringing Massachusetts-style “universal coverage” to America is worth this terrible price, why doesn’t Obama at least mention us once in awhile?
Maybe he thinks of us as the Manhattan Project of medical insurance reform. Too top secret to discuss. More likely, it has something to do with the nightmare results of this government-run debacle. Here are a few “highlights” of the current status of the Obamacare experiment in Massachusetts:
It’s exploding the budget: Our “universal” health insurance scheme is already $47 million over budget for 2010. Romney care will cost taxpayers more than $900 million next year alone.
It’s killing us on costs: Average Massachusetts premiums are the highest in the nation and rising. We also spend 27 percent more on health care services, per capita, than the national average. Those costs, contrary to what we were promised, have been going up faster here than nearly everywhere else.
It’s creating bizarre marketplace mutations: In Massachusetts, ObamaCare 1.0 is such a mess our governor is talking about imposing draconian price controls. He’s even suggested going to “capitation,” a system where doctors get a fixed amount of money per patient – and then that’s it. Which means it would become in your doctor’s financial interest never to see you again.
All this damage to the taxpayers, the insured and the responsible business owners . . . and for what?
The percentage of uninsured Bay State residents has gone from around 6 percent to around 3 percent.
In other words, it’s a dud.
And now Obama is preparing to drop the Big One on bipartisanship and turn Congress into a political hot zone for the remainder of his presidency, in order to pass a similar plan.
Is it political suicide or just political stupidity? Or is it, as many Obamacare supporters hope, the beginning of a devastating assault on the private sector?
The damage Obamacare would do to the current health care system – where 85 percent of Americans are happy with their health care, by the way – could be so great, the only institution big enough to repair it would be the government. The fact that the government inflicted that damage would be a moot point.