Mitt Romney 2012

[rhadamanthus]

Article on the successes and future challenges of RomneyCare.

In April 2010, Texas Gov. Rick Perry declared in a column for the American Statesman that "the number of uninsured people in Massachusetts is about the same as it was when the mandates were passed in 2006." The governor was wrong. And not by a little. Lies and misinformation are commonplace in the fight to reform healthcare, but Perry's claim was an out-and-out howler. As Boston Globe reporter Brian Mooney informs us in his magisterial "'RomneyCare'"-- a revolution that basically worked," around 530,000 people were uninsured in Massachusetts before healthcare reform. Since 2006, "that number has dropped dramatically, by more than 400,000." Massachusetts now boasts the lowest uninsurance rate in the nation -- 1.9 percent. In Texas, by contrast, around 20 percent of the population is uninsured -- the highest rate in the nation. Brian Mooney's wrap-up comes fast on the heels of a new paper, "The Impacts of the Affordable Care Act: How Reasonable Are the Projections?" from MIT healthcare economist Jonathan Gruber, who played an instrumental role in designing both Massachusetts' healthcare reform legislation and the Affordable Care Act -- which makes him practically the living embodiment of "ObamneyCare" -- the derogatory term coined by Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty. Taken together, the two analyses offer a clear look at the available facts about healthcare reform in Massachusetts that might help us answer the all-important question: What will happen to ObamaCare? First, the executive summary from Mooney, which is worth repeating in full, and is largely backed up by Gruber's data: -Many more businesses are offering insurance to employees than were before the law. The fear going in was that the opposite would happen. The cost of the changes, while large, has proved manageable thus far, though there are some serious warning signs on the horizon, especially as federal stimulus funds, which have helped defray the cost, run out. -The plan remains exceptionally popular among state residents -- indeed its popularity has only grown with time. There are some unhappy sectors -- notably small business owners, who had hoped to see moderating premiums and chafe, in some cases, at the heavy-handed enforcement of the rules by the state. And support for the requirement that individuals obtain insurance is down to a slender majority, a recent poll shows. But there is no significant constituency here for repeal. -And while health care costs continue to grow at alarming rates, as they have nationally, the consensus of industry leaders and health care economists is that this trend cannot be fairly traced to the makeover but rather to cost pressures baked into the existing health care payment system. Massachusetts does have the highest health care costs in the nation, but it owned this dubious distinction long before "RomneyCare" was born. So to sum up: Healthcare reform in Massachusetts is popular, covers just about everyone, and hasn't (yet) broken the state bank. However, premiums paid by employers have yet to fall, and the long-term challenge of rising healthcare costs poses a major threat to financing the system in the future.

More at the link. Sad that the dude is running away from this. It's a lone bright spot.