The Laboratory of the States

Noel at Cold Fury asks why no one pushing for Obamacare has pushed as gleaming examples the three states that have already implemented very similar policies to those being proposed? To ask the question is to answer it, because all have resulted in everything critics of Obamacare claim: runaway costs, higher taxes, poorer care, longer waits, etc...

Three states have already tried Obamacare.

Oddly, though, we hear nothing about them from those who want to impose this nationwide. If it’s such a “slam-dunk”, why aren’t the Hounds of Washington baying these success stories far and wide? Curious, these unsung stories…

Maine, or The Adventure of the Blue Lobster’s Carbuncle–or is The Red Lobster’s Blue Carbuncle? Or maybe it was Aunt Kathleen Whitehair in the infirmary with a blunt mandate. Alas, it’s a mystery…

Running out of money, the legislature went back to taxing Maine insurance companies (and, by extension, private policyholders), enacting a 2 percent tax on all paid insurance claims. The state also has capped enrollment in order to keep costs from spiraling further out of control. The program’s supporters are now looking to Washington for help. “We have a very limited capacity because of limited resources…”

Obamacare would relieve a handful of northeastern states, including Maine, of the burden of funding their broken, heavily regulated and subsidized health-care systems while imposing new burdens on the South and Midwest in the form of expanded eligibility for Medicaid. Of course Snowe voted for this bill. It’s a bailout for Maine.

Massachusetts, or The Heiress of Frankenheinz:

Like gamblers doubling down on their losses, Democrats have already hiked the fines for people who don’t obtain insurance under the “individual mandate,” already increased business penalties, taxed insurers and hospitals, raised premiums, and pumped up the state tobacco levy. That’s still not enough money….

Which brings us to Washington, where Mr. Obama and Congressional Democrats are about to try their own Bay State bait and switch: First create vast new entitlements that can never be repealed, then later take the less popular step of rationing care when it’s their last hope to save the federal fisc.

The consequences of that deception will be far worse than those in Massachusetts, however, given that prior to 2006 the state already had a far smaller percentage of its population uninsured than the national average. The real lesson of Massachusetts is that reform proponents won’t tell Americans the truth about what “universal” coverage really means: Runaway costs followed by price controls and bureaucratic rationing.

The Massachusetts plan thus violates the individual’s right to spend his own money according to his best judgment for his own benefit.

Some desperate patients have even resorted to “group appointments” where the doctor sees several patients at once (without the privacy necessary to allow the physician to remove the patient’s clothing and perform a proper physical exam). These patients all have “coverage,” but that’s not the same as actual medical care.

The Massachusetts plan is also breaking the state budget. Since 2006, health insurance costs in Massachusetts have risen nearly twice as fast as the national average. The state expects to spend $595 million more in 2009 on its health insurance program than it did in 2006, a 42 percent increase. Those higher health costs help explain why the state faced a $5 billion budget gap this summer. To help close it, lawmakers raised taxes sharply.

And Tennessee, or “The Invisible Case of the Mother of all Unfunded Mandates.”

TennCare was launched by Democratic governor Ned McWherter on the promise that it would save the state money, reduce costs, and increase coverage. Instead, in a decade, the program went from a budget of $2.5 billion to nearly
$8 billion, became mired in litigation, and was forced to make major cuts.

Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn was a Tennessee state senator back when many of the problems began to materialize in 1999. “There is not a credible example of having brought about a cost savings and insured everyone. We have seen that in TennCare,” Blackburn told me. “I just find it unconscionable that they are not talking about the lessons that they learned from the TennCare experience, the lessons that are still being learned every day from the TennCare experience.”

…”I would like to know what lessons the administration has taken from Tennessee’s experiment with ‘public option’ health care; a program known as TennCare,” Blackburn wrote.

Sebelius wrote back tersely, “We have learned many lessons from the TennCare experience and recognize its goals, but TennCare is not a traditional public option [unlike Obama's favored plan, aka "The 100% Solution"].”

The brevity of the response could be chalked up to the fact that it’s not in the administration’s interest to engage in a dialogue about what happened in Tennessee.

But Tennessee’s administration will talk about what’s happening in Washington:

Gov. Bredesen [D.] said, estimating that those costs, if realized, could exceed another $3 billion from 2014 to 2019.