- 14,808
So How's It Going in Mass?
- Thread starter Crabcake Johnny
- Start date
When the government is in charge this is the type of things that they do.
- 2,908
As discussed, the feds already have two mammoth public options, medicaid and medicare. If they have zippy answers as to how public options can lead to savings, then what are they waiting for. They have only had 45 years to demonstrate it. Most of the patients at BMC are on the public tit already and, believe me, they are not worried about middle class tax increases. I am sure they are looking forward to 2013 when they will have the same medical care as senators do.
Change you can believe in.
- Thread starter
- #5
- 14,808
I'd say that implementing severe changes Mass. has about 5 more years. After that, severe changes will be forced upon them.
- 2,908
States like Maine and Mass know that their programs are held together with bailing wire and bondo, or have collapsed already. Those who advocated those programs can't wait until the feds do something about reform so that they can transition all of their failures over to whatever the national plan is. The bad news is that the state programs failed for reasons that will now become part of the the national plan. Meanwhile, the reformers are looking to these states as models for ideological reasons that have no economic basis or increase in health care to go with them. Don't even talk about premium decreases or increase in coverage. Complete joke. The states can't wait to dump these stupid-arsed plans where you get to feel progressive but just end out not helping anyone and throwing money down a hole, and the feds can't wait to implement them apparently because they are learning disabled or something. Most people learn to duck after they have been hit by a two by four a couple times but I guess the reformers still want to do it because it "feels good" regardless of what the state experiences have been.
What a mess.
As an aside, just as in the mass article that was posted, the hosptial association in Maine has similarly had lawsuits running against the state year after year alleging that the state bilked them, which it has. The setup with the Maine program was that the state placed a tax on hosptials to help pay for the health care plan (one of many different types of taxes, too many to recount). The State argued that it would be "revenue neutral" (shades of Obama here) because now that all these low income folks who were heretofore using the emergency room as their primary care would now have health coverage, thus reducing the amount of free care the hospitals the hospitals have to absorb. Wonderful theory except they just ended out being taxed and saw zilch in reduction of freebie care. So now they are taking it at both ends.
As stated, what a mess. And there is not a single, solitary person here reading this, lib or conservative, who doesnt think that Obama's "revenue neutral" projections will go exactly the same way. He will promise you a tax or fee increase here but at the same time tell you that you will see savings there. And the savings won't happen and you will just end out being taxed.
Change you can believe in.
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- Thread starter
- #7
- 14,808
Or you just call a do-over like NH and go back to UW.
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