The RomneyCare Crackup Continues, and Is Becoming a Chasm
Subsidized care plan’s cost to double
Enrollment is outstripping state’s estimateFebruary 3, 2008
The subsidized insurance program at the heart of the state’s healthcare initiative is expected to roughly double in size and expense over the next three years - an unexpected level of growth that could cost state taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars or force the state to scale back its ambitions.
State projections obtained by the Globe show the program reaching 342,000 people and $1.35 billion in annual expenses by June 2011. Those figures would far outstrip the original plans for the Commonwealth Care program, largely because state officials underestimated the number of uninsured residents.
And, in case you’ve missed this point before, WE are being asked to pay for Mitt Romney’s handiwork — while of course, despite the out-of-control costs, Democratic Governor Deval Patrick is dedicated to keeping the black hole intact:
The state has asked the federal government to shoulder roughly half of the program’s cost from 2009 through 2011, but there is no guarantee of that funding. Commonwealth Care provides free or subsidized insurance for low- and moderate-income residents.
“The state alone cannot support that kind of spending increase,” said Michael Widmer, president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, a business-funded budget watchdog group.
….. The administration of Governor Deval Patrick produced the new estimates to launch negotiations for federal funding, and has shared them with some state health leaders at closed-door meetings. Patrick is seeking about $1.5 billion over three years, half the cumulative cost for Commonwealth Care. The administration declined to discuss the numbers or the assumptions behind them, citing the ongoing negotiations.
Naturally, Talk Radio’s new Mr. Right is pretending he’s not responsible:
The expanding need for new state and federal money is in sharp contrast to the statements made by former governor Mitt Romney, when he proposed the initiative in 2004 and as he campaigns for president. He has repeatedly suggested that the state could insure low-income residents largely by reallocating money paid to hospitals and health centers that serve the uninsured.
“The bill that I submitted to the Legislature didn’t cost $1 more than what we were already spending,” he said Wednesday night during a GOP debate. “However, the Legislature and now the new Democratic governor have added some bells and whistles.”
Cue the laugh track.
So will Rush, Laura, Sean, Levin, Beck et al talk about this today? Or will they use the day to take their last best shots at John McCain and demand that Mike Huckabee withdraw?
The Left has to be relishing this. Talk Radio spent day after day after day (justifiably) ripping HillaryCare in 1993 and 1994 (addendum: and danced on HillaryCare’s grave for the next dozen years after that). Now its Chosen “Conservative” is the guy who established HillaryCare in Massachusetts, created a miserable failure, and is now pretending it’s not his fault.
Any talker who brings up Hillary Clinton’s willingness to garnish the wages of workers to force them to buy health care but doesn’t bring up the RomneyCare fiasco ought to be called out for first-order hypocrisy.
Oh, how the mighty are falling.
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UPDATE 1: Clintonian parsing is now Romnian parsing — “The bill that I submitted to the Legislature didn’t cost $1 more than what we were already spending….” Notice how he did NOT say “the bill I signed.” That is, the Legislature added a lot of “bells and whistles” to the original bill he submitted, and HE signed the result. Especially given that he vetoed certain items in the bill that came to his desk, whose fault is it that any “bells and whistles” remained?
UPDATE 2: Called into Laura Ingraham at about 9:20, got through, said I wanted to talk about the free pass Romney is getting while RomneyCare blows up, and was put on hold. 10 minutes later, I was told that they had a guest coming up and no time for my call. Reach your own conclusions.
Rather than “cue the laugh track” why don’t you analyze his claim of “added … bells and whistles” and show that it is wrong.
–gh
Comment by gh — February 4, 2008 @ 7:53 am
I’m still not sure how this is supposed to be Romney’s fault. The sentence after your first highlighted portion is “largely because state officials underestimated the number of uninsured residents”. I guess you’d have to see who was responsible for coming up with the original estimates and why they were so far off and talk to them.
As for the Left, there is no way they’ll bring this up as Universal Healthcare is their latest golden cow and pointing out that yet another state experiment is suffering massive cost overruns (check TennCare as well) shouldn’t help their position at all.
Comment by Rob — February 4, 2008 @ 8:06 am
#2, “largely because state officials underestimated the number of uninsured residents”
The state officials who did the original estimates did so during the administration of ….. Mitt Romney.
He was in charge. The underestimates occurred on HIS watch. He can’t abdicate responsibility by waving it away.
Mr. Spreadsheet/Mr. Business Plan and his peeps should have known this would happen. My theory is that they did, but ignored it to get something passed that Romney could take on the campaign trail. They in essence were playing a game of chicken hoping that the blow-up wouldn’t occur until at least 2009. Oops.
Comment by TBlumer — February 4, 2008 @ 9:48 am
#1, Frankly, that’s Mitt Romney’s job. He’s the one being vague about “bells and whistles,” while it’s his handiwork that should be considered the prime suspect.
RomneyCare has been in place for barely more than a year. I suspect that if he could name a specific “bell” or “whistle,” he could have.
Nothing is EVER Mitt Romney’s fault, is it?
And I noticed you don’t have a word to say about how U.S. taxpayers are being fleeced for the cost overruns.
Comment by TBlumer — February 4, 2008 @ 9:55 am
Bizz -
This is a wonderful blog entry, and I have been saying the same things to my so-called “Conservative” friends who are going to support Romney.
I don’t think they understand that Romney is going to bring us socialized meds.
-LJ
Comment by Libertarian Jason — February 4, 2008 @ 10:03 am
By no means are you supposed to bring up that the “Conservative” former gov. Romney created a giant new government entitlement, which now the federal government has to bail out. It is everyone else’s fault that it is hugely expensive.
At the same time Sen. McCain has been fighting to limit the size of government. To all the so-called conservatives out there: We have a spending problem that has resulted in a $9 trillion national debt. And thanks to Mr. Romney’s new entitlement program we in the other states get to pay for that too. I have supported tax cuts whenever they have been proposed thinking that there would be a tiny amount of responsibility in our elected officials to cut spending too. Instead the deficit has exploded. If we had followed Sen. McCain’s lead and also made spending cuts we would be in a much better position economically and politically. By the way each year we spend almost $500 billion dollars,about the size of the defense budget, just to service our national debt. If we took care of the deficit we could offer everyone a 20% tax cut.
Comment by patrick — February 4, 2008 @ 10:03 am
Mass care requires that private health insurance to be acceptable to Mass standards covers Christian Science Practioniers. And everybody has their eyes on Mitt’s Mormanism. No out of state plans that I know of will cover shaman health activities. As the parent of an out of state student in Boston, I am techincally in violation of this law by not obtaining a separate health plan which covers the Christian Science mumbo-jumbo.
Comment by glt — February 4, 2008 @ 10:16 am
#5, or worse, they know and don’t care.
#6, Mr. Hynes, possibly? E-mail me if so.
#7, Interesting point. I looked into it, and found that the British NHS is getting into shaman stuff. Couldn’t find anything on MA. If you have one, a link would be helpful.
Comment by TBlumer — February 4, 2008 @ 10:31 am
RomneyCare requires people to buy insurance, but it doesn’t solve the core incentive problem in health care. I’m in no way surprised it is failing.
Comment by Quincy — February 4, 2008 @ 11:03 am
[…] but I have to point out that some of his history isn’t looking so good either, like his health care reform of Massachusetts. Keep in mind that that health care is the bare minimum of what Clinton wants to impose on […]
Pingback by Election Antics « Tai-Chi Policy — February 4, 2008 @ 1:52 pm
The way I see it, if you are going to pay for socialized health care, then pay for socialized HEALTH CARE. But Romney’s plan combined the worst of both worlds. It didn’t give the state socialized health care, it gave it socialized health care INSURANCE - a very different concept than socialized health care. Instead of taxing people to give them a minimal amount of health care, it taxes them for the privilege of being able to get on the phone with your insurance company and endlessly argue with them about what they ought to be paying for. If you are going to bite the bullet that way, you might as well just institute a European-style system.
Comment by Justin Levine — February 4, 2008 @ 2:19 pm
Romney’s statement is correct. The proposal he submitted was lean, but the legislature larded it up with “enhancements” that increased the cost to taxpayers. Romney vetoed the changes, and the legislature overrode the veto.
Comment by Thomas Dinsmore — February 4, 2008 @ 2:20 pm
Ahem, weren’t the premium payers who could pay supposed to pay a high enough premium to cover those that can’t???? How did the Feds get roped into this? I can understand the Fed paying some matching Medicaid funds, but more?
As far as the underestimating: I wonder if they just assumed everyone on Medicaid would be enrolled and everyone who didn’t pay their own was on Medicaid?
An even better question though is are a lot of poor people moving into the state in order to get benefits? This happened with both DC and CA in the 90s. Their benefits were better than the surrounding jurisdictions so the poor, who are not stupid by any means, just moved across the border to take advantage of them.
Comment by dscott — February 4, 2008 @ 2:22 pm
#12 —
A. How about some links and specifics?
B. What changes, if any, did he not veto? (please don’t try to tell me “none”)
C. The “bells and whistles,” even if explained away, don’t explain away blowing the estimate of how many uninsured people would sign up, and what they would sign up for.
+++++++++++++++
Currently, 169,000 people have enrolled in the program, which is expected to cost $618 million in the fiscal year ending June 30. When it authorized the program in 2006, the Legislature estimated that about 215,000 people would eventually be enrolled at a cost of $725 million. State officials in late 2006 reduced that estimate to between 140,000 and 160,000 - a number that was surpassed last year.
+++++++++++++++
The current estimate is that 342,000 will enroll. That’s about 60% more than the original estimate, and over 100% more than the (clearly artificially reduced) legislature’s estimate. The dollar effect of the blown enrollment estimate more than likely far exceeeds the dollar effect of the “bells and whistles.”
Anyone could have predicted that there would be a crowding-out effect, and there’s a fair chance there’s a migratory effect too (people coming into MA to get the goodies).
D. None of this explains away the celebratory signing ceremony with Ted Kennedy’s supportive attendance. Clearly, Mitt was happy with the overall result of his handiwork.
E. I see no evidence that Romney has come up with any ideas to fix the situation he predominantly created. It’s just another mess he left behind.
F. And as I said in a previous comment, Romney owes us the explanation. We shouldn’t have to dig for it ourselves. It’s HIS freaking “signature accomplishment.”
Comment by TBlumer — February 4, 2008 @ 2:58 pm
This whole mess is Willard Mitt Romney’s fault because he proposed a mandate-driven, government-run healthcare “reform” in the first place.
If he really were the pro-market reformer he now pretends to be, he easily could have proposed voluntary, portable, personal health savings accounts for Massachusetts residents.
He could have let account holders make tax-free deposits in those accounts.
He could have implemented Rep. John Shadegg’s (R - Arizona) great idea: Let people buy health insurance across state lines. If Acme Insurance in Wisconsin has a better, more economical plan than, say, Blue Cross of Massachusetts, then go ahead and buy it.
Romney could have reduced the number of procedures mandated for coverage in every policy. This would lower insurance costs, since there would be “Volkswagen” and “Toyota” models, as well as “BMW” and “Lexus” varieties on the market. People could pick and choose stripped-down insurance or policies with all the extras thrown in.
Romney ignored all of these pro-market, pro-patient ideas and instead created a brand-new, bureaucratic, mandate-fueled government program. Lo and behold, it now is big, fat, and out of control.
What a shock!
“Mr Fix It” should have seen this coming.
Comment by Deroy Murdock — February 4, 2008 @ 8:36 pm
That’s how the dems in MA work take a good plan and screw it up, then send the bill to the Feds. See “The Big Dig.”
Romney’s plan was good, but when you move on, people can add bells and whistles after you’ve left office. I think the proper way to post about something like this is to look into those bells and whistles, what was added after Romney left as opposed to before, and then give an honest analysis. If you want to post on it, do your homework.
Comment by Ben — February 5, 2008 @ 12:49 am
If you are imagining that McCain wouldn’t establish socialized medicine during his term, you are as dumb as all the Massachusetts conservatives who didn’t expect to see it on Republican Romney’s watch — or the Bush voters who didn’t expect Medicare Part D, for that matter.
The ugly truth you need to face, is that conservatism and the Left share a key characteristic — they both see individuals as children in need of being taken care of. They differ only on the kind of parent they think the State should be.
Different roads, same destination. How much more do you need to see?
Comment by Seerak — February 5, 2008 @ 1:15 am
#16, my #14 contends that the underestimate of number of enrollees, which the Romney Admin is indisputably accountable for, has been a much greater contributor to the cost surge than the “bells and whistles.”
And the homework was done, it just wasn’t laid out on a silver platter to meet your “standards.”
From article:
Current reality: 169,000 at a cost of $618 million
Original projection: 215,000 at a cost of $725 million.
Revised projection: 342,000 at a cost of $1.3 billion.
Revised projected enrollment at costs estimated in original projection:
- 342,000 at a cost of $1.092 billion (725*342/215).
Estimated costs of bells and whistles:
- $208 million ($1.3 bil minus $1.092 bil)
Remaining cost overrun due to blown enrollment estimate:
- $367 million ($1.092 billion minus $725 million).
So, the blown enrollment estimate is responsible for 64% of the problem, and the bells and whistles pick up the remaining 36%.
And this bravely assumes that Romney’s original pre-”bells and whistles” estimate wasn’t deliberately understated to make it more palatable.
Is that enough “honest analysis” and “homework” for you?
Comment by TBlumer — February 5, 2008 @ 5:08 am
#17, some alleged “conservatives” may feel that way, or govern that way, but true conservatism doesn’t see the state as parent (Barry Goldwater? Ronald Reagan?). That would eliminate George Bush from the ranks of domestic conservatives.
Comment by TBlumer — February 5, 2008 @ 5:11 am