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The Truth About RomneyCare

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Dr. Paul Hsieh, a member of D4PC's Colorado chapter, has written an analysis of RomneyCare and how the law includes a series of price controls. Admittedly, Hsieh writes, these price controls may not have been evident when RomneyCare first took effect but over time their impact demonstrates RomneyCare has resulted in price controls.

Dr. Hsieh discusses the following form of government price controls in RomneyCare:
  • Requiring insurers to ignore the fact potential insured are less healthy than others when pricing insurance is an obvious form of price controls. This forces people who are healthy and take care of themselves to subsidize the risk of those who are not.
  • Forcing insurers to include a series of mandatory benefits without prices increases is a form of price control.
  • The bundled services provisions of RomneyCare are also a form of price controls as this forces doctors and hospitals to provide services at a fix cost without regard to what those services might cost the providers.
In response to Governor Romney's claim that his law is different than ObamaCare because it does not contain price controls, Dr. Hsieh writes: "Romney’s claim that the Massachusetts plan didn’t include price controls may have been technically true at the time the law was passed. But he helped create an unsustainable system that has quickly and predictably led to price controls — with still more to come. Hence, Romney’s claim is disingenuous if not downright misleading."
  
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