Ken Berwitz

What will the future of ObamaCare look like?

In 2006, Massachusetts (with Mitt Romney as Governor, it should be pointed out) passed a state health care system not dissimilar from what just passed through the house of representatives.  Most of the major promises we have heard about ObamaCare, including lower costs, were also promised in Massachusetts.

Would you be interested in knowing how that worked out?

This is how, courtesy of Aleksandra Kulczuga, writing for www.dailycaller.com.  (The bold print is mine):

Skyrocketing Massachusetts health costs could foreshadow high price of ObamaCare

By Aleksandra Kulczuga - The Daily Caller   03/23/10 at 2:16 PM

When Mitt Romney criticized the Obama health-care program earlier this week, leading Democrats responded by pointing out that, as governor of Massachusetts several years ago, Romney himself presided over the enactment of strikingly similar reforms. RomneyCare and ObamaCare aren’t so different, Democrats argued. If you liked one, you can’t attack the other.

Fair enough. So how is the Massachusetts health-care system these days?

Like the bill that President Obama signed on Sunday, the 2006 Massachusetts plan was sold to voters on the now-familiar promise that it would reduce costs and lower unnecessary emergency room visits. That’s not what happened.

Since the bill became law, the state’s total direct health-care spending has increased by a remarkable 52 percent. Medicaid spending has gone from less than $6 billion a year to more the $9 billion. Many consumers have seen double-digit percentage increases in their premiums.

Even more striking, the 2006 law has done little to ease the burden on emergency rooms, a central goal of all heath care reform plans. A report by the Boston Globe found that in the first two years of the program, the state’s ER costs actually rose by 17 percent. “They said that ER visits would drop by 75 percent, and it hasn’t been even close to that,” said State Treasurer Tim Cahill, who is currently running for governor as an Independent. “It hasn’t changed people’s habits. It hasn’t been successful at getting people to use less expensive alternatives.”

According to Cahill, Massachusetts is still afloat thanks only to generous federal subsidies, Medicaid waivers and gobs of recent stimulus money. “I’m worried that now that this national plan has passed, some of that federal money will start drying up — that the feds might tell us, ‘No, sorry you can’t have this money because we have to go cover Texas now,’” Cahill told The Daily Caller.

Hospitals, particularly those that serve the poor, have lost so much money under the plan that a number of them are now suing the state in an effort to stay in business. “While health-care reform has brought the state closer to universal coverage,” a group of six Massachusetts hospitals filing suit explained in a recent statement, “the unintended consequence of that success is many … hospitals are experiencing significant shortfalls in payments as they treat additional patients whose public insurance doesn’t cover the full cost of care.”

The problem is not unique to Massachusetts; hospitals around the country have battled state governments over reimbursement rates for years. But there’s no question the 2006 law has made things worse. One prominent teaching hospital in the state, Boston Medical Center, filed suit earlier in the year, claiming vastly increased caseloads and a state reimbursement rate of only 64 cents on the dollar, leading to an annual shortfall of $181 million.

The problem, the hospitals allege, is that the state has diverted funds from reimbursements to prop up health plans for the uninsured. Under state law, those plans must in effect be “Cadillac” models, loaded with mandates for costly nonessentials like in-vitro fertility treatment. The plans are expensive, and therefore heavily subsidized. Hospitals are bearing much of the cost.

“Massachusetts changed everything about the health-care debate because the one thing about Massachusetts that actually worked well was getting people coverage,” said Kevin Wrege, a former Massachusetts state insurance regulator and president of Pulse Issues and Advocacy who consults with the Council for Affordable Health Insurance. “If you provide it and it’s free or near free, people will come. The problem is that the costs in Massachusetts are stunningly high.”

So what does this mean for the rest of the country, now that the Obama administration has imposed a similar plan on the rest of us? “Massachusetts,” said Wrege, “is the canary in the coal mine.”

 If ObamaCare becomes law (a near certainty, though it isn't entirely in the bag yet), never forget that we brought this on ourselves.  That's the plain truth.  This legislation is a consequence of our own actions.

The only reason this monstrosity exists in its current form is that we elected a Democratic President intent on nationalizing health care, and gave him a lopsided majority in both houses of congress.   

Because of this, we gave President Obama and congress the ability to saddle us with health care legislation that poll after poll shows most of us do not want.

Now, what are we going to do about it in November?

The 2010 elections cannot come fast enough.

And that goes double for 2012.