From what I hear on Fox News and a legion of fair and balanced repundits, RomneyCare is the most inefficient, ineffectual, expensive and fraud-riddled program ever developed by any one in human history. Ever.
I have heard (in my head) that hospitals in Massachusetts use the corpses of the patients they accidentally kill to fire the boilers (don’t get sick in winter!), that your only choice of doctor has to use quotes around the word “doctor” when he introduces himself, and that it takes six months to get someone to look at your hernia–and that’s a through a glory hole at the creepy gas station down the street!
Are there any Massachusetts dopers (still alive) that can vouch for this tragedy in health care? [END SATIRE ALERT]
The MA health care reform had little or nothing to do with the quality of care provided. The main component of the reform was the requirement that everyone purchase health insurance. We have to provide proof of insurance on our tax returns or we can be fined. Between this and same-sex marriage, I don’t understand why the ground hasn’t opened up and swallowed up the state and everyone in it.
Romney would love to put MA health insurance on Patrick’s shoulders, but the law was passed in 2006. Patrick was inaugurated in 2007.
As a side note. I have also been thinking about this law and how it relates to the national health care law. I live in MA and I can’t answer that. I have no clue. To me, nothing changed.
Fox doesn’t like Romney. He’s a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and not a real Christian. He was for abortion before he was against it. To Fox, Romney is nearly as bad as Obama. They’ll take Romney if they have to, but they won’t like it.
I live in Massachusetts too and I couldn’t tell you either. Massachusetts has great health care but it has had that for a long time. I don’t really know what the health care reforms actually did other than force people to buy health insurance. It is good in that people really should be set up in advance so that the doctors and hospitals will get paid when an emergency comes up. It can be bad if you don’t have health insurance. I got fined for going without it for a few months last year because of a job switch. I couldn’t find a way to get coverage for any reasonable price during that time so I just took the fine. Most everything else is the same.
So, what happens if you are poor and you didnt buy health insurance in the first place because you could not afford it? I was without employer-funded health insurance for a while when i was between good jobs and working a crappy one that didnt provide any assistance for health insurance (they kept me to 30 hours a week so they wouldn’t have to provide benefits … thanks, Target, Inc!) … they OFFERED health insurance, but the premiums would have left me without any money at all, literally. How did RomneyCare magically solve THAT problem?
Here’s how it happened. Granted, the Globe may have overemphasized his role just to tweak him, but it was his doing, along with some key legislators and economists.
The big enabler was that the state already had a fund to reimburse hospitals for care for the uninsured, so MassHealth (the plan for the unemployed etc.) was basically already paid for.
The funny thing is, if he were allowed to be honest, thinking it could work in MA, which had a fairly robust foundation for it to build on, but not thinking it could work nationally, without that foundation, is not inherently a contradictory position. (Might not be honest, but it’s not crazy) Of course, that would imply that MA’s ‘big government’ solution might have actually helped something, and he can’t do that. And if he could, it’s nuanced enough that Fox News types can, well, Fox News him.
Romneycare dosen’t include the client protections in the Obama plan, private insurance can still raise your rates for no reason. Some of those other lovely games they play aren’t legal here, but that was the same pre-Romney.
For the vast majority of people, (who already had private/company insurance, or poor people on MassHealth) there wasn’t any change beyond an extra two pages to the MA state tax form.
God Dammit. Apparently, I DID qualify for Commonewealth Care this year! Amazing what being out of work for 4 months will do for your yearly income.
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Unlike the manadatory gay marriage thing, which has honestly been a bit of a disappointment. At this point I’d be extactic when that guy shows up, as long as he’s willing to go half on rent.