Massachusetts' Obama-like Reforms Increase Health Costs, Wait Times | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary

Massachusetts' Obama-like Reforms Increase Health Costs, Wait Times | Michael F. Cannon | Cato Institute: Commentary: "If you are curious about how President Barack Obama's health plan would affect your health care, look no farther than Massachusetts. In 2006, the Bay State enacted a slate of reforms that almost perfectly mirror the plan of Obama and congressional Democrats.

Those reforms reveal that the Obama plan would mean higher health insurance premiums for millions, would reduce choice by eliminating both low-cost and comprehensive health plans, would encourage insurers to avoid the sick and would reduce the quality of care."

"The most sweeping provision in the Massachusetts reforms — and the legislation before Congress — is an "individual mandate" that makes health insurance compulsory. Massachusetts shows that such a mandate would oust millions from their low-cost health plans and force them to pay higher premiums.

The necessity of specifying what satisfies the mandate gives politicians enormous power to dictate the content of every American's health plan — a power that health care providers inevitably capture and use to increase the required level of insurance.

In the three years since Massachusetts enacted its individual mandate, providers successfully lobbied to require 16 specific types of coverage under the mandate: prescription drugs, preventive care, diabetes self-management, drug-abuse treatment, early intervention for autism, hospice care, hormone replacement therapy, non-in-vitro fertility services, orthotics, prosthetics, telemedicine, testicular cancer, lay midwives, nurses, nurse practitioners and pediatric specialists.

The Massachusetts Legislature is considering more than 70 additional requirements.

Those requirements can increase premiums by 14 percent or more. Officials further increased premiums by imposing new limits on cost-sharing."

"One way insurers can avoid the $50,000 patients is to drop benefits those customers find attractive. Shelby Rogers is a 12-year-old girl with spinal muscular atrophy, whose parents chose an Aetna plan through the price-controlled health insurance exchange for federal workers. Last year, Aetna announced it would drop coverage for Shelby's 12-hour-a-day nurse, who, among other things, helps Shelby avoid bedsores by turning her over at night. An Aetna spokesman explained the reason was to avoid offering a benefit that causes the sickest patients to flock to the plan.

Over time, as mandates eliminate low-cost options and price controls eliminate comprehensive options, both the Massachusetts and Obama reforms will march consumers into a narrow range of health plans.

As goes choice, so goes quality. Statistics on waiting times for specialist care in Massachusetts read like a dispatch from Canada. In 2004, Boston already had the longest waits among metropolitan areas. By 2009, waits had generally shortened in other metro areas (average wait: less than three weeks) but lengthened in Boston (average wait: seven weeks), according to the Merritt Hawkins survey."

"Massachusetts has reduced the share of its population that lacks coverage from an estimated 8.3 percent in 2006 to an estimated 2.6 percent by June 2008. Former Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican who signed the Massachusetts reforms into law, boasts that "no other state has made as much progress in covering their uninsured."

Yet that achievement carries an exorbitant price tag: at least $2.1 billion this year, according to the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a figure that doesn't even include the cost of the additional coverage discussed above. Since Massachusetts has covered just 432,000 previously uninsured residents, the cost of covering a previously uninsured family of four — at least $20,000 — is well above the average cost of an employer-sponsored family policy (about $13,000)."