In Massachusetts Democrats Prove Just as Ignorant as Republicans on How to Cut Health Care Costs

Their Plan to Restrain the Increases in Health Care  -  Make It Illegal for Costs to Rise – Why Hasn’t Everyone Done That!

This Forum heaped a lot of scorn on North Carolina Republicans when they voted to not allow the sea level to rise as a result of global warming, or for any other reason.  Yes, the legislature of that great state demonstrated their total and complete lack of intelligence by legislatively denying the sea to rise to a level that would threaten coastal property. 

Health Care Costs in Jail in Massachusetts
for Violating the Law Against Rising to Much

Now Massachusetts, a state controlled by Democrats has entered the contest to see which legislature can be the most clueless by passing legislation that will deny the right of health care costs to rise faster than the states level of income.  Yes, they have solved the problem of rising health care costs in a single bound.

The bill would not allow spending on health care to grow any faster than the state’s economy through 2017. For five years after that, any rise in health care costs would need to be half a percentage point lower than the increase in the state’s gross domestic product.

Legislative leaders say the bill, which includes other cost-slowing provisions, could save as much as $200 billion in health care spending over the next 15 years.

See the problem is that while Massachusetts under Gov. Romney passed a law requiring everyone to have health insurance, it turns out the law does nothing to control the costs of health insurance.

Although Massachusetts, under Gov. Mitt Romney, in 2006 became the first state to require most residents to have health insurance — the model for President Obama’s national health care overhaul — the law did little to slow health care costs that were already among the highest in the nation. Such spending has increased by 6 percent or 7 percent a year recently, compared with annual state economic growth of less than 4 percent.

which is exactly to be expected, since health insurance does not act as a cost control mechanism is a fee-for-service system, in fact it acts just the opposite.  But rather than go to the trouble of changing the system, Massachusetts Democrats are just going to pass a law forbidding health care costs to increase.

Of course, exactly how this would work is left out of the legislation, for the simple reason that it won’t work.

According to a summary of the bill released by legislative leaders on Tuesday, a new commission would monitor the growth in health costs and enforce the spending targets. But the bill contains no real penalty for missing the targets, and some consumer advocates are skeptical.

But this is an election year, and so now the political hacks can go back to their constituents and show they did something about the rising cost of health care.

And that’s really what this is all about, isn’t it.