Massachusetts Treasurer: Fiscal Catastrophe Ahead If U.S. Passes Health Care Overhaul
RomneyCare is probably not a very good model for federal health care reform:
[Massachusetts] Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill – a former Democrat running as an independent for governor – said the local [health care] plan enacted in 2006 has succeeded only because of huge subsidies and favorable regulatory changes from the federal government.
"Who, exactly, is going to bail out the federal government if this plan goes national?" he asked.
Cahill made his remarks after Gov. Deval L. Patrick, a Democrat, accused him and Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles D. Baker of being silent amid the state and national health care debates.
Cahill cited quotations in which he has called for the state to abandon its plan, and for the federal government not to match it.
He also gave reporters a copy of a recent state ledger sheet, showing the state's Medicaid program ballooning from $7.5 billion to a projected $9.2 billion since the plan was adopted. Meanwhile, of the 407,000 newly insured, only 32 percent paid for private insurance wholly by themselves.
I took at look at the Bay State's health care related budgetary troubles here and provided an overview of state health reform follies here.