The Legislature’s recent decision to cut the fiscal 2010 budget for Commonwealth Care as part of the state’s enormous fiscal crisis has led to renewed claims that health reform is unaffordable. In particular, the issue of Commonwealth Care funding for legal immigrants, while important in its own right, has led many observers and critics to conclude mistakenly that health reform is unraveling.
These critics ignore the fact that the fundamental problem is not the costs of Commonwealth Care, but rather the unprecedented collapse of state tax revenues. With the state facing a structural budget gap of $5 billion in fiscal 2010, virtually every state program has hit the cutting board. And as is always the case during economic downturns, caseload-driven programs like Commonwealth Care experience a temporary increase in enrollment.
Widmer concludes that health reform is worth it:
To be sure, Massachusetts, like the nation, must address the escalating costs of healthcare – for government, employers, and individuals alike – and Massachusetts has launched a variety of efforts to deal with this intractable problem. But this persistent problem has little to do with the health reform law.
These are extraordinarily difficult times for all of state government, and it is not helpful to advance unfounded allegations about the unaffordability of health reform. We need to stay the course on one of the most important state initiatives of recent times, which has become a beacon for the rest of the nation.
We agree, and appreciate the valuable contribution the Mass Taxpayers Foundation is adding to the health reform discussion. – Brian Rosman
Using MTF’s own numbers:
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p>From 2006 to 2009, we’ve seen a 70% increase in cost. Over that same period, we’ve increased the number of people with health insurance by only 10%.
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p>I think it’s ridiculous to try to diminish the 70% increase in cost by parsing it out (1) by year and (2) by touting federal spending as covering it. It doesn’t matter who is paying — you have a program that nearly doubled in cost in a few short years.
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p>When you look at how many more people who have health insurance, and you discount the 200K+ that are not on the public programs (this reflects the increases in the employer and individual purchase roles) you have an increase on the public health rolls of only 5-6%.
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p>Even if you factor the former groups, who you may argue receive some form of subsidy or benefit other than direct assistance as a result of the reform, this is an incredibly bad ROI.
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p>Please show me where I’m going wrong in my analysis.
Oh my…Yes, let’s keep rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, never mind the iceberg. We will never control the cost of health care coverage in this state until will get rid of for-profit, employer-based insurance. I mean, why would any “progressive” worth his salt want to keep wasting money on corporate profits and the administration expense of marketing plans and denying coverage(which is what the entire business model is based on), when we could just eliminate the middle man and have affordable, high quality care for all? It makes no sense.
Follow the money trail of where the misnamed Mass Taxpayer Foundation (MTF) gets their funding. Almost all of it comes from MA corporate heavy-hitters including health insurance corporations and HMOs. I’ve taken a look at their Board of Directors list along with MTF’s tax filings and Form PC’s filed with the AG’s office. Something smells bad. Really bad.
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p>An investigative reporter needs to dig around a bit to discover what entity is paying MTF to create their largely bogus P.R. tools–that they prefer to call “analyses–of the Mass. individual mandate law.
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p>A safe bet would be that both forks of the very lucrative MTF money trail (annual dues payments and additional payment for so-called “special projects/analyses”) lead directly to Mass. Blue Cross and Blue Shield and to Partners HealthCare.
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p>Outrageous. So what else is new?