Gov. Deval Patrick said the individual health insurance mandate in his state of Massachusetts is working well, popular, and not a "budget-buster."
"The fines have gone down because more and more people have taken up the insurance and it’s been good for people," Gov. Patrick said on Daily Rundown. "We’re healthier, more employers are offering insurance than ever before. The expansion has added 1% to our state budget, so it hasn’t been a budget-buster."
Massachusetts health care reform law was made law in 2006 by then governor Mitt Romney who now opposes the national Affordable Care Act that creates a federal health insurance mandate.
Gov. Patrick explained how the mandate has brought health care costs down overall.
"There’s a basic insurance premise—this is really where the individual mandate comes from—that if you spread you the risk as broadly as possible, you bring total system costs down and we have seen that," he said. "Fewer people get their primary care service in expensive emergency room settings and instead get them in primary care settings. When we talk about the cost to government, we’re talking about the small number of folks whose costs are subsidized."
Patrick noted the political challenge that remains for President Obama, saying that while the federal law remains unpopular among Americans, residents of Massachusetts consistently praise the state-law by two-thirds in poll after poll.
"There's a lot of work that has to be done to tell the benefits to people," he said.
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It only makes sense, if more people are insured then fewer people will wait on getting needed medical care...less uninsured people using emergency rooms. It equates to healthier people and less cost to the state. Win, win...in my opinion.
From Boston: Emergency room usage has gone up, not down, and the majority of the people using it are not the still (!!) uninsured, but those getting the totally free (100% tax-payer funded) Medicaid plan, called MassHealth in this state (latter data on CDC website). Two hospitals, in Boston and Cambridge, have been bearing the brunt, especially as the state raided the pool of money hospital's used to have available to help pay for these services, transferring it to cover the huge new costs of the insurance subsidies, AND the state simultaneously cut their Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals. This can't go on for much longer, and someone is going to have to pay, but obviously, not any of the people who are misusing the ER, as Medicaid recipients (along with the uninsured, of course) have zero premiums and zero co-pays and our wise state leadership clearly has no intention of instituting any fees on these folks.
The bulk of the people who got insurance for the first time under the "reform" got the "free" plan. Most of them have been funneled into the community health centers for primary care. The feds sent extra billions to Massachusetts to help pay for both the Medicaid and the health centers, so the plan as unfolding here could look successful and thus serve as a national model. However, those fed funds are gone. The state's revenue vs. outlays is also in bad shape, so that the state can in no way step up to make up the difference due to the fed cuts. The Mass system as set up is now billions of dollars short of funds to pay for the totally and partially subsidized plans and the government-funded health centers. They can only claim it's not a budget buster if they play accounting games that allow them to ignore future funding obligations.
As far as popularity goes, I wish some pollster had even once spoken to me, or any one of my family and friends. No one I know likes it. Of course, no one I know qualifies for the 100% subsidized plan --- hey, who wouldn't like "free" stuff, right? When you consider Mass. already had a very high proportion of the population insured before this was implemented, and even with that crucial condition it's not affordable, and then try to imagine this fantasyland project being forced on other states. . . FAIL.