cnn's healthcare solution - 'romney care'

love the sources 'experts say'



'Romney care' touted as a model for national health care reform

(CNN) -- If Washington wants health care reform with bipartisan support, experts say consider what former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney accomplished as governor in Democratic Massachusetts.

"You don't have to have a public option," Romney said. "You don't have to have the government getting into the insurance business to make it work."

Three years after enacting its own version of reform, Massachusetts now has near-universal coverage.

Taxpayer watchdogs say it's affordable.

"There is this widespread assumption, that is treated as fact, that it's breaking the bank in Massachusetts ... it's not breaking the bank at all." said Michael Widmer of Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation.

And health care experts say it's popular.

"Seven in 10 people in the state support the program, and no more than one in 10 would repeal it." said Robert Blendon with the Harvard University School of Public Health.

Unlike Democratic proposals that would give Americans the choice of joining a government-run health care plan, Massachusetts has no public option. Instead, people in the state are required to buy private insurance, and the poor get subsidies.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/20/romney.health.care/index.html#cnnSTCText

...as long as you don't mind, as is the case for a friend of mine, being required by law to pay $1,700/month for private insurance for your family.

:sarcasm:

Fuck that!

not popular, but then, it was a Democratic plan.

Today, it is the Romney plan and good.

Interesting.

Cato Policy Report, January/February 2008

Lessons from the Fall of RomneyCare

http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v30n1/cpr30n1-1.html

Massachusetts’ Plan: A Failed Model for
Health Care Reform
http://pnhp.org/mass_report/mass_report_Final.pdf



Here's the story about the release of the study
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2009/february/massachusetts_is_no_.php


Massachusetts is no model for national health care reform
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Physicians, public interest group urge Sen. Kennedy to introduce single-payer legislation

For Immediate Release
Feb. 20, 2009

Contacts:
Rachel Nardin, M.D.
Steffie Woolhandler, M.D.
Mark Almberg, (312) 782-6006, mark@pnhp.org

WASHINGTON - The Massachusetts health care system, widely regarded as an example of how to provide universal coverage and keep costs low, is in fact faltering badly and should not be held up as a national model for reform, according to a study released this week by Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and Public Citizen.

The study comes at a time when the health insurance industry is reportedly weighing in heavily in secret talks on Capitol Hill in favor of an individual mandate, a legal obligation requiring persons to have or to buy health insurance. The insurance industry’s position was described in today’s New York Times.

However, such mandates - which have been a cornerstone of the Massachusetts health reform - have failed to assure universal coverage, the new study says. For example, the state’s most recent figures show that it had to exempt 79,000 residents from the mandate in 2007 because they could not afford to buy insurance.

The Massachusetts plan has also failed to make health care sufficiently affordable or to control costs, the report says.


More...

Next!

Romney Plan--open door to ending Medicare.

I fear some Democrats have the same plan.

Has this whole thing been a Bait and Switch????

As the President of one of the large senior citizen groups Not AARP)
Anyway she (President) has pointed out that developing plans that
do not have a public option is the gateway to ending Medicare.
This is why the Republicans fight the option. and call it the
gateway to Single Payer.

I wish both parties would get honest here,especially some Democrats.

Drop CNN a note and ask them Are you really supporting ending Medicare.

This is what this fight is about.