While she was the First Lady, Hillary Clinton dreamed of a utopian health care system (maybe she still does!). Socialist schemes are always accompanied with lofty promises: everyone will be covered and costs will be lower.
The reality, though, is far different. Single-payer systems always cost more — always. They may spend less, but don’t confuse spending less with costing less. And the care they provide is typically substandard. Look at the systems in Canada and Britain for glowing examples of how care slips under statist health care programs.
Maine is playing Soviet roulette with its Dirigo Health insurance program that was created in 2003 to eliminate the uninsured problem in the state. As the nation watches this experiment in foolishness to see how the state is going to provide for the uninsured, cut costs and improve care, the program, launched only last summer, is already costing 11 percent more per member than was originally budgeted.
The Statehouse News Service is reporting that “Earlier this year, it was estimated the agency would need in excess of $40 million in the next fiscal year to keep going.”
“We can’t spend more than we have,” Dirigo Director Karynlee Harrington has said.
When governments reach that point, they rarely scale back. Almost invariably they make sure that they have more. The way to do that, of course, is to hike taxes.
Dirigo is also failing to enroll as many Mainers as its supporters expected. Why? It’s expensive. Employees and employers actually have to buy Dirigo plans, and both are finding them to be too costly.
The Maine Heritage Policy Center reports that an employee making $25,000 a year with a family of four has “about $226 deducted from his or her $480 gross weekly paycheck.”
Ouch! Since when did spending your paycheck on health insurance constitute a good deal? Especially when families can buy much more affordable policies in other states that haven’t “fixed” the problem like Maine has.
The state is supposed to pay back part of the cost, but that’s not much help when the subsidy doesn’t arrive on time. That would be consistent with other single-payer systems, though, since they never deliver on their promises.