The left has been on one of its periodic orgies of RomneyCare falsehoods and deceptions. There must be a pattern to (Summer Solstice? Vernal Equinox?) and reason for this coordinated regurgitation of false Gruberisms every few months but I'm damned if I can figure it out. It's all the usual suspects led by the chief Journolisters at The Washington Post (WaPo). On June 20, the lefty wonkers put out the biggest bunch of lies in the last few years.
WaPo says "premiums decreased" under RomneyCare but premiums on average have more than doubled and would have increased even more except that co-pays and deductibles have tripled. It's such an absurd claim given that the same blog has been wetting its pants the last few months over the Massachusetts state legislature's plans to institute global payments and rationing... because of high premiums.
Those paying for health care in Massachusetts (mostly large private employers and the state itself) have instituted strict networking and global payments. Now Massachusetts legislators even want to impose global payments on Medicare patients (over which they have no say). Even premiums for the price-fixed free and subsidized actual-RomneyCare insurance policies -- called CommonWealth Care and held by only about 3% of the population -- went up more than 50% through 2011 (latest data available).
The WaPo wonker bases the false "premiums decreased" claim on a misreading of 2005-2007-2009 numbers concerning premiums for individually purchased health care insurance policies -- covering only 40,000 out of 6,500,000 of us in Massachusetts by the way before RomneyCare passed -- from the American Healthcare Insurance Plan (AHIP) organization. Go read the AHIP reports. Read both
- the methodology (AHIP uses a non statistical sample that is only as good as the insurers of each state send in) and
- the findings (AHIP specifically says the Massachusetts 2008 numbers, published in 2009, are skewed by the RomneyCare "merged market" mechanism, the implementation of which was in progress at time of survey).
In other words, after RomneyCare, the market for individually purchased insurance in Massachusetts. was eliminated.
Further deceiving its readers, WaPo implies that people "abided" by RomneyCare regulations by buying insurance. In fact, NET, less than one-half percent of the population started buying insurance (typically again but some for the first time) after the passage of RomneyCare. Instead:
- Almost everyone that applied for a waiver, got one.
- Tens of thousands got economic waivers (demonstrated they could not even afford the subsidized insurance even though they owned substantial assets; typically you do this ironically by citing the high cost of taxes and other things in Massachusetts).
- Three percent got insurance for free or highly subsidized ($500 a month policy for $100 on average) as described above.
- A couple of percent always qualified for Medicaid but had not signed up.
- (These percentages add up to more than the statistically insignificant increase in uptake because of tens of thousands fewer Massachusetts residents now get insurance through employers than before the "reform," somewhat because of economy and somewhat because employers have offered benefits to fewer and fewer employees.)
The 1% budget increase claim is WaPo's biggest new lie. The actual statisitc is 1% MORE THAN ESTIMATED before RomneyCare for the same people (working poor) FOR EACH of the five years. The actual Blue Cross Foundation report wording is "Over the five full fiscal years since the law was implemented, the incremental, additional cost per year was..." Each of the underlined words has weasel signifcance of the highest order. (Of course, the WaPo wonkers also don't tell you who did the terrible estimations. It wasn't Romney. He estimated that there would be no incremental cost for his reform.)
Putting that in English, Pure RomneyCare has cost $2 billion. The previous way of serving the working poor cost $1 billion. This does not reflect other implications for rest of state budget (healthcare costs up 50%) or our personal budgets (higher property taxes) tied to but not part of Pure RomneyCare.
I'm also assuming WaPo means "over the course of SIX years..." If the Democratic-party Journolister at WonkBlog really meant only FIVE years (that is, start caluclating beginning the year after RomneyCare passed, which is actually when RomneyCare became effective) the WaPo statistics are all worse. All kinds of market tampering happened during fiscal 2007, the first year. Starting with Fiscal 2008 instead, costs have skyrocketed and insurance uptake is down not up.
-- Dennis Byron
