Universal Health Care - It’s Not Just Maine’s Program That Fails

So, the House of Representatives is slapping together a health care overhaul bill, at the behest of Obama, which of course will cost a bundle, paid for with, what else, but taxes.

Michael Tanner, in a piece at National Review titled How Not to Reform Health Care, notes that the State of Maine’s try at reforming health care and universal health care is failing, miserably, and states the following.

As the national debate over health-care reform begins, many in Congress are looking to Massachusetts as a model for what that reform might look like. Indeed, from mandates and subsidies to some form of exchange or “connector,” many of the key components of the Massachusetts reforms are likely to end up in the bill to be voted on this year.

But three years after it was voted in, experience suggests the “Massachusetts model” actually provides an object lesson in how not to reform health care. The program has failed in its main goal of achieving universal coverage. It has failed to restrain the growth in health-care costs. And it has greatly exceeded its initial budget, placing new burdens on the state’s taxpayers.

Let’s not forget the abject failure of the State of Wisconsin’s attempt at the same game.

This exercise is especially instructive, because it reveals where the “single-payer,” universal coverage folks end up. Democrats who run the Wisconsin Senate have dropped the Washington pretense of incremental health-care reform and moved directly to passing a plan to insure every resident under the age of 65 in the state. And, wow, is “free” health care expensive. The plan would cost an estimated $15.2 billion, or $3 billion more than the state currently collects in all income, sales and corporate income taxes. It represents an average of $510 a month in higher taxes for every Wisconsin worker.

Employees and businesses would pay for the plan by sharing the cost of a new 14.5% employment tax on wages. Wisconsin businesses would have to compete with out-of-state businesses and foreign rivals while shouldering a 29.8% combined federal-state payroll tax, nearly double the 15.3% payroll tax paid by non-Wisconsin firms for Social Security and Medicare combined.

The above quote I grabbed from a Wall Street Journal article titled Cheese Headcases Wisconsin reveals the cost of “universal” health care., back in July 2007, and noted so in a post I titled Stop Universal Health Care Now! - Learn from Wisconsin.

Third time does not make a charm, especially at the national level.

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