Boris
10-26-2009, 11:24 PM
DirigoChoice
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/health/dirigochoice.asp
Through its Dirigo Health reform plan, Maine ought to make quality, affordable health coverage available to every resident by 2009, while at the same time slowing the growth of health costs. The plan's centerpiece was an insurance subsidy program, DirigoChoice, which offered affordable health insurance to small businesses and to families with low to moderate income.
Sound familiar? This program, and the one in Mass, are almost never held up as a workable model for government run health insurance. Wonder why?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574322401816501182.html
After five years, fiscal realities as brutal as the waves that crash along Maine's famous coastline have hit the insurance plan. The system that was supposed to save money has cost taxpayers $155 million and is still rising.
Continuing
The program flew off track fast. At its peak in 2006, only about 15,000 people had enrolled in the DirigoChoice program. That number has dropped to below 10,000, according to the state's own reporting. About two-thirds of those who enrolled already had insurance, which they dropped in favor of the public option and its subsidies. Instead of 128,000 uninsured in the program today, the actual number is just 3,400. Despite the giant expansions in Maine's Medicaid program and the new, subsidized public choice option, the number of uninsured in the state today is only slightly lower that in 2004 when the program began.
Why did this happen? Among the biggest reasons is a severe adverse selection problem: The sickest, most expensive patients crowded into DirigoChoice, unbalancing its insurance pool and raising costs. That made it unattractive for healthier and lower-risk enrollees. And as a result, few low-income Mainers have been able to afford the premiums, even at subsidized rates.
Isn't this what Obamacare is all about and a similar concept? What happens when the US government begins selling insurance and mostly the sick people show up? What happens when a court rules the federal government can not require citizens to purchase health insurance? Where are the supporters of the versions of Obamacare in Hawaii, Maine, Mass, and Tenn?
http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/health/dirigochoice.asp
Through its Dirigo Health reform plan, Maine ought to make quality, affordable health coverage available to every resident by 2009, while at the same time slowing the growth of health costs. The plan's centerpiece was an insurance subsidy program, DirigoChoice, which offered affordable health insurance to small businesses and to families with low to moderate income.
Sound familiar? This program, and the one in Mass, are almost never held up as a workable model for government run health insurance. Wonder why?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204619004574322401816501182.html
After five years, fiscal realities as brutal as the waves that crash along Maine's famous coastline have hit the insurance plan. The system that was supposed to save money has cost taxpayers $155 million and is still rising.
Continuing
The program flew off track fast. At its peak in 2006, only about 15,000 people had enrolled in the DirigoChoice program. That number has dropped to below 10,000, according to the state's own reporting. About two-thirds of those who enrolled already had insurance, which they dropped in favor of the public option and its subsidies. Instead of 128,000 uninsured in the program today, the actual number is just 3,400. Despite the giant expansions in Maine's Medicaid program and the new, subsidized public choice option, the number of uninsured in the state today is only slightly lower that in 2004 when the program began.
Why did this happen? Among the biggest reasons is a severe adverse selection problem: The sickest, most expensive patients crowded into DirigoChoice, unbalancing its insurance pool and raising costs. That made it unattractive for healthier and lower-risk enrollees. And as a result, few low-income Mainers have been able to afford the premiums, even at subsidized rates.
Isn't this what Obamacare is all about and a similar concept? What happens when the US government begins selling insurance and mostly the sick people show up? What happens when a court rules the federal government can not require citizens to purchase health insurance? Where are the supporters of the versions of Obamacare in Hawaii, Maine, Mass, and Tenn?