Massachusetts Treasurer Says Obamacare Will Bankrupt Country in 4 Years

This guy would know thanks to Romneycare:

The Massachusetts treasurer said Tuesday that Congress will “threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years” if it adopts a health-care overhaul modeled after the Bay State’s.

Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill – a former Democrat running as an independent for governor – said the local plan enacted in 2006 has succeeded only because of huge subsidies and favorable regulatory changes from the federal government.

“Who, exactly, is going to bail out the federal government if this plan goes national?” he asked.

Cahill made his remarks after Gov. Deval L. Patrick, a Democrat, accused him and Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles D. Baker of being silent amid the state and national health care debates.

Cahill cited quotations in which he has called for the state to abandon its plan, and for the federal government not to match it.

He also gave reporters a copy of a recent state ledger sheet, showing the state’s Medicaid program ballooning from $7.5 billion to a projected $9.2 billion since the plan was adopted. Meanwhile, of the 407,000 newly insured, only 32 percent paid for private insurance wholly by themselves.

The remainder have received partial or total taxpayer subsidies to buy the insurance coverage required by the plan.

The Obama administration is asking the House and Senate to approve a national plan that includes a similar “individual mandate,” as well as an entity designed to match buyers with private health insurance plans.

Cahill said the Massachusetts equivalent, the Connector, had assisted only 5 percent of those who bought private insurance without any type of government assistance.

And he said that while the Massachusetts program has increased access to health insurance, it has nothing to rein in underlying cost increases, meaning it is steering more people to a broken system.

“If President (Barack) Obama and the Democrats repeat the mistake of the health insurance reform adopted here in Massachusetts on a national level, they will threaten to wipe out the American economy within four years,” the treasurer said.