LESSONS FROM MASSACHUSETTS

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The Massachusetts experiment in health care reform offers many lessons that are applicable to the current debate in Congress. The goals of the Massachusetts plan are similar to proposals supported by Democratic congressional leaders and the Obama administration: universal health insurance coverage through greater access to health insurance.

The Obama proposals would use similar means to achieve these goals: requiring individuals to purchase insurance and creating an "insurance exchange" where they can buy heavily regulated, heavily subsidized health insurance.

The Massachusetts reform, however, has raised costs, not lowered them.

The state has indeed lowered the number of uninsured dramatically -- down to 2.6 percent of the population by some estimates. But it has done so in a very expensive way that does nothing to control costs.

The state was able to get the federal government to pay for much of these new costs, but even with that help, state government spending has increased 42 percent since 2006.
The Massachusetts program has cost about one-third more than projected when the law was passed.

In just two years under the Massachusetts reforms, from 2005 to 2007, health care spending per capita rose an additional 23 percent.

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