Government health care is already circling the drain where it's been tried, in the state of Massachusetts:
Massachusetts has created a different cost-shift problem through its Obamacare-style guarantee that people can wait to get coverage until they're sick or want medical procedures. The Boston Globe reports, "Thousands of consumers are gaming Massachusetts' 2006 health insurance law by buying insurance when they need to cover pricey medical care, such as fertility treatments and knee surgery, and then swiftly dropping coverage, a practice that insurance executives say is driving up costs for other people and small businesses."
Predictably, costs in Massachusetts -- always high -- have only gone higher; the state now spends about 30 percent more per capita on health care than the rest of the nation. Predictably, the insurance regulations have only made insurance more expensive, as has been the case elsewhere; premiums in the individual market have been growing at a 30 percent annual rate. Predictably, the new health-care program has cost more than expected; spending grew by about 40 percent from 2006 to 2009.
At first, Massachusetts plugged the holes with more taxes and fees. Now, just as Obama is hailing the state as his opening act, it is moving to the next inevitable phase: unapologetic price controls.
The state's regulators have rejected 235 of 274 premium increases proposed by insurers, in an extraordinary exercise of a power that had sat idle on the books since 1977. As The Wall Street Journal points out, the big insurers in Massachusetts are nonprofits like Blue Cross Blue Shield and Harvard Pilgrim, hardly the comic-book villains of liberal rhetoric. The state's arbitrary clamp-down on rates will force insurers to cut access to care, or go out of business. As subtle as a kneecapping, the state's move is rationing by proxy.
Insurers have taken to the courts, and most of them stopped offering new coverage for individuals and small businesses pending a ruling on their request for an injunction. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, meanwhile, wants the power to review the rates of hospitals and doctors and disallow those deemed too high.
And so the free lunch promised Massachusetts in 2006 devolves toward a fiscally beleaguered government setting prices and limiting care, exactly the downward spiral critics fear from Obamacare.
America only need look across the Atlantic to see where this all leads. It leads to rationing and denial of life-saving care. The latest example from the U.K.: NHS Meltdown: Rare Cancer Patients Refused Life-Prolonging Chemotherapy:
In the UK, a woman with a rare cancer has been refused coverage for chemo that would extend her life. From the story:
A dying mother last night became the human face of an election battle over the NHS. Nikki Phelps, 37, who has a rare glandular cancer, has been refused the only drug that could prolong her life. Despite pleas from her consultant, her local NHS trust says it will not meet the £100-a-day cost.
Labour ministers promised more than a year ago to give sufferers of rare cancers easier access to life-extending drugs. But the rationing body NICE has since refused to approve ten such drugs. Experts say the rulings cut short up to 20,000 lives.
That would be the same NICE that former Senator Tom Daschle–who the NYT called the most influential non government adviser on Obamacare–wants our system to emulate. If it does–and the pieces are in place now to create a US NICE that would have say over private as well as public policies–we will see this story repeated repeatedly here once the new health care law goes into full gear.
Obamacare is a reversal of the formula that has produced the world’s unchallenged greatest nation. For these reasons, 100 percent of Obamacare must be repealed.
With the massive costs of Obamacare, we cannot hope to pay our debts in our lifetimes or our children’s. Under Obamacare, costs will go up and quality will go down. Under Obamacare, we must go all the way to the Supreme Court to reestablish the Constitution as a pact limiting the reach of the federal government.
However, all of the aforementioned will not crush our national spirit like the oppressive weight of mandated dependency. Obamacare takes away the American right to manage our own lives.
Meanwhile, the cancer of overspending and governmental fiscal ruin is already spreading across the nation, with 33 states out of money to fund jobless benefits.
Predictably, the leading proponent of all this unsustainable spending is taking a severe hit: Democratic Party Image Drops to Record Low
It's time for America to get real. This is the worst possible time to lay yet another unsustainable burden on states, private businesses, and individuals. Government-controlled heatlh care is too costly in dollars and lives.
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