What Massachusetts health care cuts mean for California | Health ...

Romney aide Leavitt advises states to prepare health care plans. Todd Heisler. New York Times.

By T. L. Viens

The Massachusetts Legislature this week approved limiting health care costs for measures signed in 2006 by then-Gov. Mitt Romney, now the GOP?s presumed nominee for president.

The bill disallows health care spending to grow at a rate greater than the state?s economy until 2017, according to the New York Times. In addition, the bill stipulates that for an additional five years after 2017, health care costs must remain at least a half percentage lower than the increase in the state?s GDP. These provisions, in effect until 2022, are estimated to save the state as much as $200 billion over the next 15 years.

Although Massachusetts? health care reform provided a model for President Obama?s Affordable Care Act, the nation?s first state law to require most residents to have health insurance did little to slow the state?s health care costs.? Health care spending grew 7.5 percent, according to the Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy, higher than the state?s annual growth of less than 4 percent.

The Massachusetts reform was also a platform for California?s health care reform laws, strong-armed through a partisan-divided legislation by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010, according to a story by comrade Marinucci.? ?We flew [Romney's] people out here and we learned a lot from them,? said Daniel Zingale, then a senior aide to Schwarzenegger. Zingale said the state modeled several provisions after Romney?s bill ? particularly the requirement for all citizens to have health insurance.

California pioneered state health care exchanges and preemptively extended temporary coverage to citizens who stood to benefit from the federal health care law but did not qualify for Medi-Cal. That will come in 2014.

When the bill passed in California, despite roots as a Republican initiative and an introduction by a Republican Governor, it didn?t receive a single GOP vote in the legislature.

The recent stop-gap measures instituted by Massachusetts could foreshadow a potential problem in California, whose health care system serves a much greater population.

Article source: http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2012/08/02/what-massachusetts-health-care-cuts-mean-for-california/

Source: http://medicaltips.org/2012/08/03/what-massachusetts-health-care-cuts-mean-for-california/

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