The corollary lesson, however, is not so happy. People don’t welcome a requirement to pay for something that they aren’t already purchasing. According to the best estimates, to date, a mere 26,000 have signed up for subsidized plans that require premiums. Only 8,306 have purchased the unsubsidized plans offered through the state’s new bureaucracy.
This has huge implications for state spending. The plan doesn’t contain any meaningful cost-control mechanisms. The bureaucrats managing the new health care agency are expressing concern about cost trends. People purchasing the insurance are older and sicker than projected, resulting in losses to the insurance carriers. Outside of the plan, Massachusetts health insurers have projected increased health premiums of 8 to 12 percent. The plans for which the taxpayers are subsidizing will likely require similar increases in cash.
At this point, it seems smart for Mitt Romney to run from his plan and distance himself from its design even as Hillary Clinton and other Democrats embrace it. The goal of universal coverage has already been abandoned. If the government can’t get people to purchase insurance in the next few days, Romney’s handiwork will end up as another expansion of big government—enrolling thousands more in Medicaid, creating an expensive bureaucracy to expand taxpayer subsidized insurance, sticking the taxpayers with much of the cost. That’s not an achievement about which one brags on the stump—especially not in a Republican primary.