The Massachusetts legislature, on July 31, passed the fourth major revision of RomneyCare, in six years. Remember -- when enacted in 2006 -- RomneyCare was the so-called be-all/end-all reform of the Massachusetts' health care insurance system.
This latest revision to RomneyCare is a crazy quilt mix of of corrupt Massachusetts politicans fixing prices, hiring relatives to new bureaucracies, and showering money on activist groups favored by the Democratic Party.
Luckily RomneyCare 2012 -- like RomneyCare 2006, RomneyCare 2008 and RomneyCare 2010 -- does not affect most of us in Massachusetts (other than having the same indirect effects such as shifting money away from kids and cops in the state budget). But it is a sad day for
- the already beleagured subscribers to MassHealth (Medicaid) and users of our special Massachusetts Medicaid Lite (RomneyCare insurance itself)
- state government employees (I don't think RomneyCare 2012 affects state retirees or they'd have been lobbying against it), and
- the relatively small percentage of state residents that are insured in the so-called merged market or who get their insurance through a larger group that is not self-insured.
And if you're already in an HMO, even if you are in one of the affected cohorts, you're not really affected either.
Now, when you call Beacon Hill, the answering machines will say something like:
"This is Massachusetts State Senator Corrupt's office. All my 'nieces' are busy helping others. Press One for a job in the Probation Department. Press Two for a doctor's appointment. Press Three to get your kid into UMass. Press Four for..."
Soon the Massachusetts state-government motto will change from "It's not what you know, it's who you know" to "If you don't know a State Rep, limp!"
-- Dennis Byron
