Friday, February 12, 2010

Health Care Price Controls in Massachusetts?

In 2006, Massachusetts enacted a health insurance "reform" that became the blueprint for Obamacare.  Now

Governor Deval Patrick is seeking sweeping authority to review and reject rates charged by hospitals, physician groups, medical imaging centers, and insurers, in a broad new effort to make health care more affordable, particularly for smaller companies and their workers.
The Governor's desire to reduce costs is understandable, since Massachusetts has the highest premiums in the nation.

But the Governor's approach to reducing expenditure is misguided because it will kill the incentive to supply healthcare services in the Commonwealth.  A better approach is to make consumers pay a higher fraction of their health costs, via increased co-pays and deductibles in government insurance and greater taxation of employer-paid premiums.

2 comments:

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