Opinion pages and blogs over the past few days have featured plenty of opinions about the Massachusetts plan for near-universal health insurance coverage. Here is a sample:
A Boston Globe editorial titled “Healthcare Heroes” begins with this laudatory paragraph:
“Approval of a bill to provide just about everyone in Massachusetts with health insurance has attracted national attention, and justifiably so. The Legislature devised an innovative, comprehensive approach to a hitherto intractable problem. The plan ventures into uncharted policy territory and will require adjustments and probably more money, but it is a proud statement that government can improve the lives of its people.”
However, a Washington Post editorial titled “Universal Health Care: Massachusetts points the way--sort of” is a little more cautious:
“The state's Republican governor, Mitt Romney, lauds the plan as a way of achieving universal coverage without new taxes or a government takeover of the health system. Mr. Romney deserves credit for working with a Democratic legislature to come up with a promising plan, but not for his rhetoric. Though there may be no new taxes, there are new business ‘fees’--and most experts predict that these will have to go up to make the plan work. Meanwhile, the bill envisages the creation of a government agency to decide which health plans are ‘affordable,’ which ones offer sufficient quality, which, if any, are deviously trying to cherry-pick healthy customers, and so on.”
An op-ed piece in The Boston Globe by Edwin Amenta, professor of sociology at University of California, Irvine, and New York University, suggests that history has taught us how such proposals can become palatable at a national level:
“Social Security also provided language that shielded politicians from an American public that can become hostile to government, even when public opinion is in favor of action…. The Massachusetts legislation provides similar political cover. By requiring individuals who can afford health insurance to buy it, the proposal emphasizes individual responsibility. By placing fees on businesses that fail to cover their workers, the proposal sanctions those not carrying their weight. A Massachusetts proposal writ large can be favorably contrasted to the highly complicated and much maligned Clinton health security plan of the 1990s.”
Finally, blog posters presented a variety of sharply worded opinions. Here are a few excerpts from comments made on The Huffington Post:
“Well, it's a start. Something certainly has to be done because the system as it stands right now is nothing short of broken.”
“Instead of addressing the issues of the medical care crisis in this country and the staggering profits the insurance and pharmaceutical companies are raking in, our politicians once again put more of a financial burden on their citizens.”
“I suspect that most supporters of universal health care have never experienced it themselves. I grew up in a country with a national health scheme, and although treatment is ‘free’ it comes with a 17% national sales tax and $5/gallon gasoline. It also comes with rationing, quotas, and after waiting (sometimes for years) second rate treatment.”
Read opinions from some healthcare leaders here.
And click on the word "comments" below to add your thoughts.
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