Just as cost containment is NOT happening in the Medical Republic of Massachusetts forcing uninsured taxpayers to help fund medical inflation will not reduce the spiral of medical inflation nationwide.

Massachusetts lives high off of medical profits and has an incentive for medical care to be bloated, wasteful and expensive.

The recent Boston Globe spotlight on how Blue Cross / Blue Shield has bedded with Partners Healthcare to bleed more out of already strained wage earners to help further bloat their bottom lines is evident that having these money grubbers at a health care reform table is like like using jackals and hyenas guard your flock of sheep.

If your national goal is for Massachusetts to grow fat at your expense, do adopt the Massachusetts model of health care “reform”. If your goal is health care reform go back to the drawing board and come up with reforms that reduce the 30% papershuffling bloat and excess medical industry profits.

America’s per capita health care spending averages almost double that its Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development industrial trading partners according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. And, they HAVE uninversal medical coverage. http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm010307oth.cfm

What this says is we could spend about half what we spend today and still get everyone covered. We just have a gore a few very over fatted oxen.

The free market does not work in healthcare. Pricing can’t continue to be determined where different prices are negotiated for the same services at different hospitals and different physician groups . This leads to an uneven distribution of capital from technologies from community to community. It also causes physician migration and changes in referral patterns.

Prices are now a function of bargaining power and result in differences in access from community to community. Health care is about life itself and patients cannot be left vulnerable even for transitory periods as the market adjusts. Regulation, including
regional planning in the open is more necessary than ever.

There is reason for concern about trust in government and the ability of government to manage efficiency. I am not advocating for government owning healthcare or healthcare insurance, but the government should establish rules for the market to operate morally, fairly and equitably when the “product” is the quality of life itself.

I suggest that Governor Patrick go beyond warning health plans to control premiums or face regulation and move immediately to a set of rules .