As you may have seen, Mike Huckabee trashed the Massachusetts health care system, stating it's been an utter failure and should be repudiated by Mitt Romney. (We can use the title of Romney's latest book as an indicator of how he might respond.)
There's one problem with Huckabee's assertions. Put on your shocked face -- they're not substantiated by fact. Let's compare the Huckabee with the reality.
(By the way, Mike, if you're reading this, I hearby challenge you to a bass duel, and I will kick your ass.)
Here's Mikey:
If our goal in health-care reform is better care at lower cost, then we should take a lesson from RomneyCare, which shows that socialized medicine does not work.
First of all, Massachusetts is not "socialized medicine." I wish. Second of all, even if it were socialized medicine, it's not as if it would have been the first attempt on planet earth. You ever notice that enormous land mass just north of the United States? Yeah, that's called Canada.
Here's reality:
New data has been released on the effectiveness of Massachusetts’s health care law, and most of the findings are positive.
Woa, what's that word? Data? Wasn't he a character on Star Trek? What's that all about?
The new study, released this week by a team of Massachusetts economists, shows that the state's health care insurance requirement has been key to the health care law's success. This requirement, which was enacted back in 2006, states that all Massachusetts Residents must have health insurance coverage.
Look -- I understand why you Republicans hate mandates. A "man-date" does sound kind of gay, and we all know how you feel about that. But mandates work. Both kinds.
Here's what Mikey thinks Romney should say:
We gave it our best shot and I'm proud we tried it because – in a world where we all agreed something needed to be done – we thought this might be a way to fix the crisis we had in health care. Our experiment did not turn out as we had hoped. It cost more, waiting times were higher, quality of care went down, people were greatly dissatisfied and it ended up having almost the polar opposite effect of what was intended.
Only problem is, if Romney said that, he'd be lying.
Researchers believe they have pinpointed exactly why this health care law is so successful here. Based upon their findings, there was a greater increase in the number of healthy people who signed-up for coverage, compared to those who were chronically ill. Researchers say this "individual mandate" is the main reason why healthy consumers purchased insurance in the first place. If this requirement was not in place, they say, the only ones who would be buying health insurance would be the ones who were sick and more expensive to cover.
OK, so we're insuring more people, but what about the cost! The cost! The cost! The cost! Massachusetts health care costs are skyrocketing! Medicaid rolls are swelling!
A few problems with that. First, it's happening all over the country in every state. But second, let's go to the independent research group, Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation:
Despite a public perception that the state's landmark health care reform law has turned out to be unaffordable, a new analysis by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation finds that the cost to taxpayers of achieving near universal coverage has been relatively modest and well within initial projections of how much the state would have to spend to implement reform, in part because many of the newly insured have enrolled in employer-sponsored plans at no public expense.
The Foundation report concludes that state spending on the reform has increased by $350 million between fiscal 2006, the last year before reform, and fiscal 2010 - an average annual increase of only $88 million.
Does that mean health care costs aren't a problem? No, they're still a problem. I know, it's crazy -- Massachusetts health care reform has been in place for four years now, and there are still cost issues that need to be addressed.
But I can tell you, my mother, a therapist in Western Massachusetts was able to start a private practice because of health care reform. She helps clients every day who would not otherwise be able to see her.
Mike, if you're ever in the area, give her a call. You're suffering from delusion.