Massachusetts Health Stats

Births Down, "Free" Babies Rise Rapidly in Massachusetts

It's a good thing women and girls are having fewer kids in Massachusetts.  Because taxpayers are paying for more and more of their births.  

In absolute numbers, according to the state's Department of Public Health

What Hypocritical Bastards: Massachusetts Democrats Urge Obama Not to Cut Part C Medicare Advantage

After totally screwing up what is arguably¹ the most successful Medicare reform ever, the Medicare Part C voucher program signed into law by President Clinton in 1997, by passing a law in 2010 that made massive funding cuts to Part C, the hypocrtical Massachusetts House of Representatives delegation has asked President Obama not to make planned 2014 Part C cuts that Obama says he is required to make by law.

It looks like another case of not reading the legislation before the bozos voted for it. (To be totally accurate, Stephen Lynch didn't vote for the cuts in 2010 and Kennedy wasn't a Congressperson at the time.) 

Second-Team of Left-Wing Healthcare Journalists Now On Parade for RomneyCare

A couple of weeks ago a bunch of journalists came to Boston to be propagandized by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and the slew of good government (goo goo) types and high-paid consultants that are making a career off of or are living off of RomneyCare.  This article in the March 24, 2013 St. Louis Post Dispatch¹ is one of the typical results. The number of such fawning inaccurate articles about RomneyCare will only increase as we approach the nth anniversary of RomneyCare in early April.

(As an aside, it appears that unlike the first team journalists that came into Boston this time last year for an all-expenses-paid-by-Kaiser propaganda pep talk. these second stringers apparently paid their own way. Either way, Massachusetts chambers of commerce thank you for the business.) 

Over 200,000 Massachusetts Seniors Choose Democratic Medicare Voucher Program

It's kind of ironic that some Democratic group hiding behind corporate and union money is today claiming that over 1,000,000 Massachusetts residents currently between ages 45 and 54 will be forced into a Republican Medicare Voucher Program starting in 2023 when over 200,000 of us current Massachusetts seniors are now very happily saving a lot of money and getting great health care from the 1997 Democratic Medicare Voucher Program (known as Medicare Part C).

I'd like to see my kids (they're actually in the 35-44 age bracket) get the same opportunity to save money and get good healthcare (such as annual physicals, preventive care, help with vision and dental costs, and -- most important -- catastrophic coverage) in 20-30 years that I'm getting today from the 1997 Democratic Medicare Voucher Program. But the Democrats in Washington now want my kids -- AND ME -- all to go back to the old LBJ Medicare with its lack of catastrophic coverage, high co-pays and co-insurance, lack of annual physicals and drug coverage, lack of dental and vision coverage, and other limitations.  

ObamaCare Creator Wants Massachusetts' Medex Bronze Cost Increased Over $1000 a Year

Professor Gruber of MIT, one of the many self-proclaimed architects of RomneyCare and Obamacare, now wants to screw Massachusetts seniors on Medicare and Blue Cross Medex Bronze out of $1000 a year (see top of page 4).

Blue Cross Medex Bronze is the most popular single Medicare supplemental insurance product in Massachusetts (although Part C Medicare Advantage products are more popular in aggregate and employer retiree insurance is the most popular approach in Massachusetts for making up for the huge deficiencies in Democratic Party Medicare). But don't feel OK if you are a senior living in Massachusetts and are on Medicare and AARP Medigap, or Medicare and Fallon Medigap, or Medicare and Harvard Medigap. Gruber wants to cheat you out of money too.

Here's More Useless Left-wing Harvard Crap about RomneyCare

I could have spent more time thinking up a better headline.  But as a Massachusetts Medicare recipient, a former victim of RomneyCare, and a retired market researcher (not in healthcare), this Harvard guy just pisses me off. This recent article is so off base that it is hard to know where to begin making corrections or comments. How do people get away with such nonsense?

Some of the mistakes are simply indicators of sloppy research and writing, others are examples of total failure to understand Massachusetts’ health care market, and the most critical statements by the author point to complete intellectual dishonesty. So just taking statements in order presented by the author as opposed to order of importance, here goes:

 

With RomneyCare 2.0, It's Deja Vu All Over Again in Massachusetts Political Deceit

We used to have automobile insurance premium prices fixed in Massachusetts by state law. What happened back when that was the case?  

• Very few sane insurance companies would even sell automobile insurance here in the Bay State--no GEICO, no Allstate, no Progressive, etc.  
• Those few companies that sold auto insurance here were politically connected statists that survived by 
  • paying off politicians with campaign contributions
  • paying off the state bureaucrats that regulated them with revolving door jobs.
• Auto insurance premiums rose through the roof every year after a kabuki dance in which 
  • the auto insurers claimed they needed an x% premium increase 
  • the state government bureaucrats said the insurers couldn't have any increase 
  • the auto insurers ended up getting a .67x% increase 
  • the auto insurers laughed all the way to the bank
  • The Boston Globe wrote a breathless story every year describing the kabuki dance and concluding that our great government saved the day.
• Auto dealers, auto body shops, and the AAA -- which is really an insurance company and a travel agent, not an automobile association -- were all complicit in this political deceit
• Massachusetts had the highest auto insurance premiums in the United States (sound familiar?)

In Massachusetts Health Care Reform, It's Still Who You Know, Not What You Know

Actually, in all of Massachusetts politics, it's still who you know not what you know.  So Massachusetts health care reform should be no different.  

It's not exactly the Probate-Department scandal or the fact that six Democratic-Party House Speakers in Massachusetts in a row have turned out to felons. No, it's just Massachusetts policitcs as usual.

The guy who used to run healthcare reform and the Massachusetts Connector Authority's so-called "health care exchange" for Governor Deval Patrick quit and became the CEO of the biggest¹ for-profit health insurer doing business with the Connector Authority.  You know the for-profit insurers that Deval Patrick and other Obama cronies piss all over all the time.

Roosevelt Screws Worcester County Seniors: Now You Need to Leave Fallon or Leave "Fallon"

I really couldn't figure it out last October.  

"Why was President Obama's major fundraiser and health care insurance advisor, James Roosevelt of the Tufts health insurance non-profit, kicking 5000 Worcester County seniors off the seniors' $45 a month Tufts Medicare Part C health plan and then trying to lure them back to the same plan for $65 a month?"

Clearly Roosevelt got permission from his buddies in Obama's Medicare bureaucracy to pull the switcheroo in a way that Tufts did not have to explain that the change was nothing more than a 40%-plus price increase in a year when most Medicare Part C health plan prices went down. If the price increase had simply been implemented the way annual Medicare Part C plan changes really work, Roosevelt would have had to explain what was really going on.

But still giving up thousands of customers in Worcester County didn't make sense. Now we know "the rest of the story."

Waiting for Obamacare 5: More Ways Massachusetts Left-wing Press, Democrats, Health Care Statisticians Lie about RomneyCare

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's administration and the Massachusetts' goo goos ruining the best healthcare system in the world have taken political deceit to a whole new level with the new but still way out of date RomneyCare data released in late January 2013 (see this and other links slugged "Waiting for Obamacare...."). I believe the state's months-long delays (from already very delayed releases of information) in releasing the data and changed formats and missing data points and missing years are all about hiding one fact:

To the extent that you believe that the national Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) mirrors RomneyCare in Massachusetts, PPACA -- also known as Obamacare -- is going to be a disaster. 

Even a far left winger like Brian Rosman at Health Care for All has commented on the RomneyCare data delays... but then he gives the state some inexplicable pass for not following its own rules.