By: David Freddoso
Online Opinion Editor  Washington Examiner
03/04/1

The always fun-to-read Michael Graham asks why President Obama never discusses ObamaCare 1.0 — also known as RomneyCare. RomneyCare, enacted in Massachusetts by the former Republican governor, is in many ways identical to the Senate bill that will be crammed back into the House later this month: Individual mandate, exchanges, no public option.

Graham writes:

Here are a few “highlights” of the current status of the Obamacare experiment in Massachusetts:

It’s exploding the budget: Our “universal” health insurance scheme is already $47 million over budget for 2010. Romneycare will cost taxpayers more than $900 million next year alone.

It’s killing us on costs: Average Massachusetts premiums are the highest in the nation and rising. We also spend 27 percent more on health care services, per capita, than the national average. Those costs, contrary to what we were promised, have been going up faster here than nearly everywhere else.

It’s creating bizarre marketplace mutations: In Massachusetts, ObamaCare 1.0 is such a mess our governor is talking about imposing draconian price controls. He’s even suggested going to “capitation,” a system where doctors get a fixed amount of money per patient – and then that’s it. Which means it would become in your doctor’s financial interest never to see you again.

All this damage to the taxpayers, the insured and the responsible business owners . . . and for what?

The percentage of uninsured Bay State residents has gone from around 6 percent to around 3 percent.

That’s a high price to pay for a very meager benefit.

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