After listening to conservatives’ hysteria over the Affordable Care Act for the last two weeks, it was fascinating to hear Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick talk about his state’s health care program, or Romneycare. The program, a micro version of the Affordable Care Act, served as the ACA’s blueprint.
Though the program is wildly successful today, it launched with many of the same problems as the ACA, Patrick said on MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes. Massachusetts has 97 percent of its residents signed into the program. The website, which is much smaller than the federal government’s ACA website, experienced numerous problems that had to be fixed in the days and weeks after the launch.
And even though there was evidence that many people were visiting the site, most of the enrollment activity took place as the deadline date drew closer.
Patrick was asked why Massachusetts’ plan has been so successful. His response? Democrats and Republicans worked together to make the program operate correctly. Problems were identified and fixed quickly.
Much of the catastrophe that opponents of the ACA predicted hasn’t materialized in Massachusetts, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2013.
“Patrick was asked why Massachusetts’ plan has been so successful. His response? Democrats and Republicans worked together to make the program operate correctly.”
The Democrats created Obamcare all by themselves because they had the complete control of the government (at the time). They didn’t want or need any input from Republicans on how to cover the small percentage of Americans who didn’t have health insurance. The Democrats opted for the Big Government Solution and would have preferred the Single Payer Plan if they could have gotten all of their members to agree. Instead of allowing free-market insurance competition across the country they created government-controlled “exchanges”, raised taxes, expanded medicare and forced mandates on everyone, creating the mess we are witnessing today. The creation of Obamacare was unilateral. Opposition to it was bi-partisan.
Now the Democrats want the Republicans to help “fix” and “implement” their disaster called Obamacare. However, the Democrats own Obamacare in its entirety. The Republicans won control of the House in response to the Democrats’ creation of Obamacare. They weren’t elected to help perpetuate a bad solution. The good news is that eventually the country comes to its senses. Prohibition was once “the law of the land” as Obama proclaims Obamcare to be. But prohibition was repealed when people saw it was bad legislation.
Big lies:
“Your check is in the mail”
“I’ll still respect you in the morning”
“If you like your health care plan, you can keep it”