Bryan Fischer
Bay Staters show how to game MussoliniCare by gaming RomneyCare
By Bryan Fischer
We have said from jump street that if health insurance companies are required to issue policies to folk regardless of pre-existing conditions, health insurance companies will soon go broke and everyone will be driven into the government-owned, government-operated system because there will be no place else to go.
For private health insurance companies, guaranteed issue is guaranteed bankruptcy.
Certainly this is by design in MussoliniCare, as President Obama has made no secret that his real agenda is a single payer system which has produced the medical marvels we see in Britain: rationed care, inferior care, long wait lists and skyrocketing costs.
According the Boston Globe, Gov. Mitt Romney has, in his RomneyCare catastrophe in Massachusetts, provided the blueprint for gaming MussoliniCare, and Bay Staters are catching on quickly.
More and more residents are only buying insurance when they need pricey medical care, which include such boutique items as fertility care and knee surgery. As soon as they have bilked the system for their expensive treatments, they drop their coverage like a hot rock until the next major medical crisis comes along.
In 2009 alone, just under 1000 people signed up with one private insurer for coverage for three months or less, running up claims of thousands of dollars per month in the process. Their medical spending, while insured, was a horrendous four times the average for the saps who buy coverage on their own and faithfully pay their monthly premiums rain or shine.
For the RomneyCare hustlers, it's a pretty sweet deal. The typical monthly premiums for these short-termers: $400. The average claims they racked up? Over $2,200 a month.
Massachusetts' second largest private insurer reports that about 40 percent of consumers who purchased insurance on the open market kept the insurance for less than five months and incurred, on average, $2400 a month in medical expenses, about six times higher (!) than the consumers who faithfully coughed up their premiums when they didn't need it.
The price tag for this perfectly legal maneuver has run into the millions of dollars over the last two years.
Three of the four major insurers in Massachusetts lost money last year, and the state government just denied their request to raise premiums to cover their costs. They will either go bankrupt or close their doors before they're forced to.
Doctors are fleeing the Massachusetts market by the truckload, making the Muriel boat lift under Jimmy Carter look like a paddle boat outing at the local lagoon.
Because primary doctors are in such short supply, visits to emergency rooms — one of the problems RomneyCare was supposed to fix — are actually up seven percent. What good is insurance if you have no doctor to take it to?
And this is just a training-wheel exercise for the day when MussoliniCare kicks in in 2014. The dismal experiment of Massachusetts will be replicated on a nationwide scale, shutting down virtually all private insurance and leaving Doctor Mussolini as our only option.
Now Gov. Romney saw to it that Massachusetts residents who don't buy insurance have to pay a fine. No problem, say the gamers. I'll pony up the pittance of a fine (about $93 a month) until I need some expensive surgery, I'll kick in the $400 or so a month for the three or four months it takes to get my new baby or my new hip, then I'm out of there.
Gov. Romney has provided the perfect template for President Obama, for this feature is replicated almost exactly under the socialized plan.
There are two takeaways here. One, Mitt Romney should not be allowed anywhere near the White House in 2012.
He will have to wear this thing like an anvil necklace for the rest of his political life, and we can only hope clear-thinking Republicans will scratch him from the short list forthwith and allow his public career to sink into the bottom of the deepest political ocean on the planet.
Two, MussoliniCare must be repealed in its entirety.
A stake must be driven through its beating heart so that it can never again rise from the grave. MussoliniCare, all 2700 of its fetid pages, must be dumped in Boston Harbor right next to the tea. Conservatives should not support any candidate for federal office unless his mission in life is to repeal this monstrosity in all its gruesome entirety.
Some Republicans have already publicly abandoned the repeal plan and hope only to nibble around the edges, as if there was something salvageable here. There isn't. There is not one, single solitary redeeming feature in any page, paragraph or line of this bill, and any Republican who thinks otherwise needs to be sent to the distant reaches of of the unemployment lines in November. If we ever needed the Tea Party movement, now is it.
© Bryan Fischer
April 5, 2010
We have said from jump street that if health insurance companies are required to issue policies to folk regardless of pre-existing conditions, health insurance companies will soon go broke and everyone will be driven into the government-owned, government-operated system because there will be no place else to go.
For private health insurance companies, guaranteed issue is guaranteed bankruptcy.
Certainly this is by design in MussoliniCare, as President Obama has made no secret that his real agenda is a single payer system which has produced the medical marvels we see in Britain: rationed care, inferior care, long wait lists and skyrocketing costs.
According the Boston Globe, Gov. Mitt Romney has, in his RomneyCare catastrophe in Massachusetts, provided the blueprint for gaming MussoliniCare, and Bay Staters are catching on quickly.
More and more residents are only buying insurance when they need pricey medical care, which include such boutique items as fertility care and knee surgery. As soon as they have bilked the system for their expensive treatments, they drop their coverage like a hot rock until the next major medical crisis comes along.
In 2009 alone, just under 1000 people signed up with one private insurer for coverage for three months or less, running up claims of thousands of dollars per month in the process. Their medical spending, while insured, was a horrendous four times the average for the saps who buy coverage on their own and faithfully pay their monthly premiums rain or shine.
For the RomneyCare hustlers, it's a pretty sweet deal. The typical monthly premiums for these short-termers: $400. The average claims they racked up? Over $2,200 a month.
Massachusetts' second largest private insurer reports that about 40 percent of consumers who purchased insurance on the open market kept the insurance for less than five months and incurred, on average, $2400 a month in medical expenses, about six times higher (!) than the consumers who faithfully coughed up their premiums when they didn't need it.
The price tag for this perfectly legal maneuver has run into the millions of dollars over the last two years.
Three of the four major insurers in Massachusetts lost money last year, and the state government just denied their request to raise premiums to cover their costs. They will either go bankrupt or close their doors before they're forced to.
Doctors are fleeing the Massachusetts market by the truckload, making the Muriel boat lift under Jimmy Carter look like a paddle boat outing at the local lagoon.
Because primary doctors are in such short supply, visits to emergency rooms — one of the problems RomneyCare was supposed to fix — are actually up seven percent. What good is insurance if you have no doctor to take it to?
And this is just a training-wheel exercise for the day when MussoliniCare kicks in in 2014. The dismal experiment of Massachusetts will be replicated on a nationwide scale, shutting down virtually all private insurance and leaving Doctor Mussolini as our only option.
Now Gov. Romney saw to it that Massachusetts residents who don't buy insurance have to pay a fine. No problem, say the gamers. I'll pony up the pittance of a fine (about $93 a month) until I need some expensive surgery, I'll kick in the $400 or so a month for the three or four months it takes to get my new baby or my new hip, then I'm out of there.
Gov. Romney has provided the perfect template for President Obama, for this feature is replicated almost exactly under the socialized plan.
There are two takeaways here. One, Mitt Romney should not be allowed anywhere near the White House in 2012.
He will have to wear this thing like an anvil necklace for the rest of his political life, and we can only hope clear-thinking Republicans will scratch him from the short list forthwith and allow his public career to sink into the bottom of the deepest political ocean on the planet.
Two, MussoliniCare must be repealed in its entirety.
A stake must be driven through its beating heart so that it can never again rise from the grave. MussoliniCare, all 2700 of its fetid pages, must be dumped in Boston Harbor right next to the tea. Conservatives should not support any candidate for federal office unless his mission in life is to repeal this monstrosity in all its gruesome entirety.
Some Republicans have already publicly abandoned the repeal plan and hope only to nibble around the edges, as if there was something salvageable here. There isn't. There is not one, single solitary redeeming feature in any page, paragraph or line of this bill, and any Republican who thinks otherwise needs to be sent to the distant reaches of of the unemployment lines in November. If we ever needed the Tea Party movement, now is it.
© Bryan Fischer
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