Romney Needs To Admit That RomneyCare Was A Failure

Before the Massachusetts health care law became politically labelled as RomneyCare, it was called MassCare. MassCare was forced to come into being because health care costs in Massachusetts were some of the highest in the country and were rising much faster than salaries and wages.  Like the rest of the United States, hospital emergency rooms were being clogged with patients without insurance.

When passed into law in 2006, MassCare had the lofty expectations that health care insurance rates and costs would be reduced; that the quality of care would be improved; and, that health care access would be expanded to 95% of state's citizens.  But, as of today, Massachusetts health care problems have only worsened.

First of all, MassCare increased the amount of patients and patient visits and care.  That would be good thing if the number of doctors were also increased to handle the new volume of patient activity.  But, it didn't.  So the doctors got swamped; leaving patients with the only alternative but to go to emergency rooms for their health care.  Today, choked emergency rooms are even more common place than before MassCare.

Then, there is  the issue of controlling insurance costs.  When MassCare became law, it greatly expanded the number of Medicaid insured.  This forced doctors and hospitals to accept a lower fee structure when caring for this whole new raft of Medicaid patents.  The bottom line was that doctors and hospitals started operating in the red and losing money with every Medicaid patient they cared for.  So, to offset the loss of income, health care providers were forced to raise the prices for non-Medicaid insured patients.  That cost was then passed onto the insurance companies who, in turn, were forced to raise their prices.  In the end, MassCare forced insurance rates to rise faster than the rates in other states.  Now, the current Governor, Deval Patrick has imposed price controls on insurance companies.  But, this in no way solves the problem of costs going up.  All it does is guarantee that marginally profitable insurance companies will go out of business.

Lastly, when MassCare was proposed, it was only supposed to cost the state $88 million.  Today, the expense is in excess of $4 billion and rising.

MassCare was a poor attempt to rein in costs and improve care and, Romney needs to come clean on that.  Otherwise, he will never be convincing in criticizing ObamaCare and talking about its repeal.