No Rx in Massachusetts

Senator Ted Kennedy, Governor Mitt Romney, the medical establishment of Massachusetts and the state's consumer advocacy groups could hardly resist congratulating themselves on passing a new health insurance law this past spring--a so-called individual mandate requiring the uninsured to buy coverage from private carriers under penalty of paying higher income taxes if they don't. The media called the law a model for states to replicate and praised such diverse groups for coming together to solve a seemingly intractable problem. A headline in the New York Times proclaimed, A Health Fix That Is Not A Fantasy.

A close look, however, reveals that the new law may well be a fantasy and a triumph for special interest politics after all. "It's absolutely worthless," says Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine and author of The Truth About the Drug Companies. "There is no magic in Massachusetts."

The law is yet another patchwork attempt to dodge the main obstacle to reform--a fundamental lack of agreement about equity in healthcare. Americans still don't share equity as a universal value, so every endeavor to cover more people results in a complicated, contorted and underfinanced scheme. Massachusetts's latest move is no exception. It pushes the country further away from national health insurance--with its essential ingredients of universal access, low administrative costs and limits on what medical providers can charge. Instead the law embodies much of the right's approach to health reform, which continues to make the world safe for big insurance, big hospitals, and Big Pharma while palming off on the working poor the task of covering themselves. Indeed, a document distributed by Romney's staff says the organizing principles of the new law are "a culture of insurance" and "personal responsibility"--exactly the opposite of what's needed if the United States is ever to join the rest of the world in providing medical coverage for all its people.

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