Whenever the left-wing and far-left-wing press reports on Massachusetts' healthcare system -- be it during the week of September 1 on healthcare prices still going through the roof (or not?) or over the last year in comparisions of RomneyCare with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) -- there are constant references to the RomneyCare healthcare exchange and how it failed because of PPACA.
The technology that failed in October 2013 and that was finally dropped altogehter in the Winter of 2014 was not RomneyCare's "exchange."
- First, it was an entirely separate multi-multi-million-dollar Democratic Party payola boondoggle.
- Second, RomneyCare never had an "exchange." It had a web site slightly lower in functionality than the site you use to renew your driver's license. You had to apply to MassHealth -- Medicaid in Massachusetts -- for RomneyCare with paper and then months later -- when you were turned down for Medicaid but approved for the RomneyCare insurance by MassHealth, not the Connector Authority -- you were given a password by return mail that you could use to go online and choose from one of just three policies, artfully named Types 1, 2 or 3 (do you want a commercial, auto or motorcycle driver’s license?)
And it is a total lie to say this crappy old DMV-like web site had anything to do with insuring 97% of the Massachusetts population. First, 94% of us already had insurance (depending on which statistical source is used). Only 3% of the Massachusetts population ever used the RomneyCare web site.
Left-wing press: please stop mixing up the fairly simple 20-year-old technology concept built by Governor Romney with President Obama's health care insurance law.