Will Obamacare Cost As Much As Romneycare?

If it were not for Romney, it’s extremely unlikely that Obama would have passed his universal health law last year, although the two laws differ in important ways. The basic architecture, however, is the same...Romney’s real problem is not just the mandate, but that he showed Democrats the political and procedural way to passing a universal-health-care-law in America.

Ryan Lizza, “Romney’s Dilemma: How His Greatest Achievement Became His Greatest Liability,” The New Yorker, June 6, 2011

August 8, 2011 – Five years after Romneycare passed in Massachusetts, the truth is out.

According to a June report “The High Price of Massachusetts Health Reform” by the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University in Boston, Romneycare is costing Massachusetts’ consumers and the state government an arm and a leg, and the federal government a whole new body of debt.

The Institute found from 2006-2011 in Massachusetts,

• State health care expenditures rose $414 million.

• Private health insurance costs rose by $4.31 billion.

• The federal government spent an additional $2.42 billion on Medicaid in Massachusetts.

• Medicare expenditure increased by $1.43 billion.

• Total health care costs rose by $8.57 billion.

• Massachusetts shifted the majority of costs to the federal government.

Key Components

The key components of Romneycare were:

• An individual mandate requiring all citizens who could afford it to buy health insurance.

• An employer mandate requiring all employers with 11 or more employees to make a “fair and reasonable contribution” to employee’s health insurance.

• An expansion of Medicaid subsidies for residents with incomes up to 300% of poverty.

• Creation of an insurance exchange (The Connector) to provide a “seal of approval” the Connector deemed to be of good value to consumers.

Conclusions

Authors of the Beacon Hill Institute report concluded,

“Advocates promised that the law would shrink the rolls of the uninsured and reduce health costs…However, the 2006 law has failed to reduce costs. Health care reform has pushed increases both above the pre-reform growth trend in Massachusetts and the growth rate of the rest of the country... The ability of the federal government, facing its own budgetary problems, to carry burdens imposed on it by the states, is not unlimited.”

Will ObamaCare, fashioned after Romney care, follow state and federal health care skyrocketing health costs in Massachusetts? Given the current federal debt burden, can the U.S. afford ObamaCare?

Time, and the voters, will tell.

For more information, call or write the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University, 8 Ashburton Place, Boston, Mas, 02108, 617-573-8750, email: bhi@beaconhill.org, web: www.beaconhill.org