So How's RomneyCare Working Out?

[John_Stamos_Left_Ear]

Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post posited the following a couple of weeks ago:

Republicans scream that Obamacare is sure to fail. But what they really fear is that it will succeed.

That’s the reason for all the desperation. Republicans are afraid that Obamacare will not prove to be a bureaucratic nightmare — that Americans, in fact, will find they actually like it. The GOP fears that Obamacare will even be credited with slowing the rise of health-care costs to a more manageable rate.

Even President Obama has taken this tact in recent stump speeches:

“The Republican party has just spun itself up around this issue,” Obama said. “And the fact is the Republicans’ biggest fear at this point is not that Affordable Care Act will fail. What they’re worried about is it’s going to succeed.”

I think it’s pretty obvious that there is a kernel of truth to this. Otherwise, the Republicans should be smart and just let ObamaCare become the nightmare they expect and gleefully point out “I told you so.”

Even if you want to claim that Republicans are fighting against this law because it will hurt America and they love this country so much they refuse to allow this to happen, such a devil’s advocate position evaporates when you see them shutting down the government and threatening for a second time to smash America’s credit rating and all the negative things that will come with that with the upcoming debt ceiling.

More evidence that Republicans are afraid of this law having some success: If the opposition party was so convinced that ObamaCare would fail, then why is it that most of their arguments against it are demonstratively false?

Almost all of the criticisms that have been put out there are hyperbolic nonsense bankrolled by the Koch Brothers. Death panels… Socialism… Images of Uncle Sam with a speculum gazing between a women’s spread legs… And now, telling young people to not get insurance which serves only to hurt the bill’s chance of success on the backs of young people bankrupted by medical bills.

One would think that a bill which is so bad wouldn’t need lies and exaggerations to sell that point to the American population. But of course the misinformation campaign has worked splendidly.

Setting all of that aside, wouldn’t it be great to see how ObamaCare might work once implemented? Not in projections from think-tanks or government agencies which may or may not have a bias. But from actually being set loose in the wild, affecting real people with real medical and insurance needs?

Oh wait. We can. It’s called RomneyCare. And it’s been the law of the land in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts since 2006. Oh it’s not exactly the same - as is befitting the businessman Romney, there is a somewhat greater onerous on business participation in ObamaCare compared to RomneyCare. But the components are still the same including the individual mandate and fine for those who do not comply, the one thing that seems to bug conservatives and the one legitimate bone of contention for those decrying the legislation.

It’s not perfect but it’s better than the hypothetical arguments we have seen. So how has RomneyCare been working out for Massachusetts?

Facts excerpted from an editorial slamming it in the Wall Street Journal (dated 7/10/2010):

The state’s universal health-care prototype is growing more dysfunctional by the day, which is the inevitable result of a health system dominated by politics.

In the first good news in months, a state appeals board has reversed some of the price controls on the insurance industry that Gov. Deval Patrick imposed earlier this year. Late last month, the panel ruled that the action had no legal basis and ignored “economic realties.”

The deeper problem is that price controls seem to be the only way the political class can salvage a program that was supposed to reduce spending and manifestly has not. Massachusetts now has the highest average premiums in the nation.

Mr. Patrick wants to export the rate review beyond the insurers to hospitals, physician groups and specialty providers—presumably to set medical prices as well as insurance prices. Last month, his administration also announced it would use the existing state “determination of need” process to restrict the diffusion of expensive medical technologies like MRI machines and linear accelerator radiation therapy.

Facts excerpted from a Forbes contributor praising it (dated 1/20/2012):

The state’s healthcare reform has no serious opposition. Individuals and businesses, by a large margin, agree that the program may not be perfect, but it has been successful as measured by the people, including many middle income families, who would not be able to afford health insurance otherwise.

To date, 99% of the state’s residents have health insurance, up from around 90% before healthcare reform. That number changes drastically depending on which segment of society you look at. At least 24% of low income residents did not have health insurance prior to the 2006 law, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington DC non-partisan think tank. Today, just 8% of low income adults do not have healthcare coverage.

Overall, the number of uninsured, which was estimated to be as high as 650,000, more than the population of the city of Boston, has been wiped out. People in Mass. are covered. By comparison, the national average in 2010 had 16% of the population without healthcare coverage. It’s worse in some states. Texas has 24% of its population going without health insurance, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

A two year old study from Urban Institute revealed that concerns over employers dropping coverage or scaling back benefits because of health reform have not been realized.

In 2009, the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation produced a report titled “Massachusetts Health Reform: The Myth Of Uncontrolled Costs.” The report found that the cost of “RomneyCare” was “modest” and within early projections of how much the state would have to spend to implement universal coverage.

In 2008, two years after the reform act, health insurance premiums remained a problem. Then, the Massachusetts legislature enacted an array of measures related to health care costs and quality like the development of uniform coding and billing standards and prohibitions against hospitals seeking payment for preventable complications from medical errors, all of which helped add to costs.

By 2010, the state produced a series of reports on the underlying causes of high health care costs and the feasibility and possible impact of a range of solutions. Fixing that problem remains a long road. It was never a prerequisite to passing healthcare reform. Perhaps it should have been called health insurance reform. Regardless, the coverage has increased. The state is not going bankrupt. Nor are the companies paying the fair share assessment.

Health care expenditures in the state are still growing more rapidly than wages and income, according to the Blue Cross Foundation. But that’s not because of healthcare reform.

And here’s what the people covered by RomneyCare think about it based on a poll conducted just two months ago:

The vast majority of Massachusetts residents are satisfied with their healthcare under the state’s 2006 reform law, though costs and appointment wait times remain an issue, according to a new poll.

Eighty-four percent expressed satisfaction with their healthcare, citing the quality of the care or “good access,” according to the Massachusetts Medical Society, a statewide physician group that conducted the poll.

The survey also suggested several areas that still need improvement in the state’s healthcare system.

Nearly 80 percent said cost is the most important healthcare issue facing Massachusetts compared with access to care and quality of care. Another 65 percent said their healthcare costs are more expensive than last year.

From what I can tell, RomneyCare is a work in progress but a mostly successful one. It has not done as much to reel in healthcare costs as proponents might have liked, but it seems unlikely that the law itself is at fault since there are other factors and Massachusetts had some of the highest healthcare costs before the law came into affect and costs are rising everywhere without RomneyCare on the books.

Businesses might not be as thrilled with it as the general public, but there hasn’t been a noticeable movement among businesses to kill jobs over it and the human cost of an unreformed healthcare system doesn’t seem to be overwhelming the financial cost significantly.

It seems to me that ObamaCare would need to have some kinks worked out of it to become as successful as RomneyCare has been, but instead of letting the law come out and work on fixing those things, Republicans would rather shut down the government and wreck the world economy. Maybe it is because they are afraid of seeing it succeed. Maybe because in the test case that is RomneyCare, it mostly has succeeded.

[Lightnin]

I agree- I think it’s quite obvious that the Republicans are afraid it will succeed… because if they thought it would fail, they’d let it do so and reap the rewards come next election. And, like you said, their efforts to derail Obamacare are doing a heck of a lot more damage to the country than Obamacare itself is even capable of doing.

One thing I find fairly amusing is that I’ve seen several Righty forum OPs gleefully post about how the official ACA website has been up and down ever since the launch… as if that somehow shows that the concept can’t work. Uh, no, that means that it’s actually working (at least insofar as people are trying to sign up for it).

[GIGObuster]

@Lightnin

I agree- I think it’s quite obvious that the Republicans are afraid it will succeed… because if they thought it would fail, they’d let it do so and reap the rewards come next election. And, like you said, their efforts to derail Obamacare are doing a heck of a lot more damage to the country than Obamacare itself is even capable of doing.

One thing I find fairly amusing is that I’ve seen several Righty forum OPs gleefully post about how the official ACA website has been up and down ever since the launch… as if that somehow shows that the concept can’t work. Uh, no, that means that it’s actually working (at least insofar as people are trying to sign up for it).

Like a poster remarked in a GQ thread:

It’s like if Yogi Berra channeled many of those critics: ‘Noboby goes there anymore, it’s too crowded’.

[Revenant_Threshold]

To be fairer, judging by some of the posts by anti-Obamacare posters, it seems more likely that Republicans are worried that it will appear to be successful. Saying they fear that it will be successful seems to imply more dishonest motives than is reasonable.

[John_Stamos_Left_Ear]

@Revenant_Threshold

To be fairer, judging by some of the posts by anti-Obamacare posters, it seems more likely that Republicans are worried that it will appear to be successful. Saying they fear that it will be successful seems to imply more dishonest motives than is reasonable.

Not really. They have already used misinformation to make it seem unsuccessful before most of the legislation has even taken affect. And it has worked - they have made it appear a failure before it even has been implemented for the most part.

Why is it a stretch to think that they wouldn’t just use the same lie-and-exaggerate tactics once it is rolled out in order to dampen genuine enthusiasm for the law?

Hell, they have already done this. As was mentioned above, they gleefully tout that websites are unable to handle the load… Which is amazing since nobody wanted it according to them. :rolleyes:

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

It’s not unreasonable to oppose it because they think it will be successful. Let’s say you think it’s a bad policy, but one that voters will become dependent on - like Social Security or Medicare* - it makes sense to oppose it.

*I’m not saying these are bad policies, just that if you did think so you wouldn’t be able to do anything about them.

[Revenant_Threshold]

@John_Stamos_Left_Ear

.Why is it a stretch to think that they wouldn’t just use the same lie-and-exaggerate tactics once it is rolled out in order to dampen genuine enthusiasm for the law?

Because the actions of some aren’t the actions of all?

@Really Not All That Bright

It’s not unreasonable to oppose it because they think it will be successful. Let’s say you think it’s a bad policy, but one that voters will become dependent on - like Social Security or Medicare* - it makes sense to oppose it.

*I’m not saying these are bad policies, just that if you did think so you wouldn’t be able to do anything about them.

I suppose the assumption i’m making is that if it was successful, and thus it genuinely recieved greater still support from people, they wouldn’t want to oppose it.

[John_Stamos_Left_Ear]

@Revenant_Threshold

Because the actions of some aren’t the actions of all?

When the Republican establishment is so enamoured with the lies that they repeat them themselves as talking points, and never repudiate them on the rare occasisons they are taken to task over them, I think it doesn’t much matter if there are some [del]RINOs[/del] um, I mean moderate Republicans who might not be as culpable as the fringe. Legitimate criticisms of ObamaCare have been lost in the haze of lies due to their prevalence and how shrilly they are screamed.

I suppose the assumption i’m making is that if it was successful, and thus it genuinely recieved greater still support from people, they wouldn’t want to oppose it.

I think that’s unlikely and the evidence does not bear it out.

In fact, as was the point of this thread, the success of RomneyCare thus far doesn’t bear that out.

[John_Stamos_Left_Ear]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

It’s not unreasonable to oppose it because they think it will be successful. Let’s say you think it’s a bad policy, but one that voters will become dependent on - like Social Security or Medicare* - it makes sense to oppose it.

*I’m not saying these are bad policies, just that if you did think so you wouldn’t be able to do anything about them.

To quote noted Conservative scholar Dave Mustaine, “It’s still ‘We The People,’ right?”

And I don’t see what is controversial about Americans being dependent upon quality, affordable healthcare. The alternative pretty much sucks.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Dave Mustaine was a lefty when he wrote that song. He didn’t become a right winger until he found Jesus later in life.