Mitt Romney's Massachusetts's [failed] experiment

Romney's Convictions

Excerpt:

Governor Romney experimented with his consultant-centric approach in the Massachusetts laboratory, and the result was the "universal" health-care program the state adopted in 2006. As he tells it, the experts crunched the data. As he doesn't tell it, his initiative became a petri dish for the latest liberal health-care theories.

Insurance in Massachusetts is among the most expensive in the nation because of multiple mandates, such as premium price controls and rules dictating that coverage be offered to all comers regardless of health. Mr. Romney's cardinal flaw was that he did not attempt to deregulate and allow the insurance market to function as it should.

Instead, Mr. Romney saw the status quo and raised. At first he suggested mandatory health escrow accounts for people who decline to insure themselves. Once the consultants and the liberal state legislature were through with it, Mr. Romney's initiative became the "individual mandate," a first-in-the-nation requirement that residents acquire insurance or pay penalties.

The mandate in combination with other regulations effectively socialized the Massachusetts insurance market, and then Democrats on Beacon Hill added more subsidies and business penalties. Mr. Romney claimed victory anyway, heralding the new plan as "free market" as he plotted his GOP Presidential run. Inconveniently, however, both Hillary Clinton and John Edwards made Massachusetts the model for their 2008 health-care proposals.


Comment: Government mandates are not the solution to the health care insurance crisis.