By Eric Fehrnstrom |   Monday, June 22, 2009 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Op-Ed

 

The lesson from health care reform in Massachusetts is that you don’t need a government insurance plan to get everyone covered.

 

It’s a lesson lost on leading Democrats like Howard Dean, who insists there can be no meaningful overhaul unless you “give Americans a choice between a public and private system.” With their blind insistence on government insurance, liberals run the risk of derailing the entire reform effort.

 

In Massachusetts, the groundbreaking health care reform signed into law by Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006 has led to 440,000 more people getting coverage without a government-run option. Nearly 98 percent of citizens are now enrolled in a plan. No other state has made faster progress in covering its uninsured.

 

Liberals attack it because it’s not single-payer, and some conservatives object to the individual mandate, but 69 percent of the public expressed its approval in a recent survey. It passed with support of the business community, hospitals, private insurers, Republicans and Democrats. In the 200-member Legislature, there were two dissenting votes, a bipartisan miracle.

 

The market-driven Massachusetts approach is simple: Strip away regulations to lower the cost of private policies, require everyone to have coverage just as they must for their autos, and convert the money we already spend on free care into subsidies to help the needy buy insurance.

 

Is it perfect? No, like any bold experiment, it’s going to require fine-tuning. But already some of its best features are being copied by President Barack Obama, such as a health insurance exchange where individuals and small businesses can shop for affordable plans.

 

Critics who complain about the cost of the subsidies overlook the progress in reducing state payments for free care, a nearly 40 percent drop from $661 million in 2007 to $410 million in 2008. Having achieved near-total coverage, there’s no reason Gov. Deval Patrick can’t further reduce that number. He can drive costs down even more by making adjustments in benefits and by requiring everyone to contribute something to the cost of their insurance.

 

As it is now, none of the constituencies needed to make health care reform a success are willing to fully get behind Obama’s effort as long as it includes public insurance - not the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, not the American Medical Association and not the 1,300 insurers represented by the national association America’s Health Insurance Plans.

 

And who can blame them? Obama has long been an advocate of a single-payer system, as is Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

 

In 2003, as a state senator, Obama told the AFL-CIO, “I am a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program.” Last year, Obama pledged to build on the existing system, but still wouldn’t rule out single-payer down the road.

 

Sebelius, speaking at Harvard in 2007, said, “I’m all for a single-payer system eventually,” but for now wants to “work with what we’ve got” to fill the gaps.

 

No wonder free market advocates fear a Trojan horse strategy that moves us to single-payer “eventually.”

 

The last thing America needs is a government takeover of health care, which represents 17 percent of the economy. Massachusetts proved it’s possible to get more people covered by strengthening the free market. This is the course that national health care reformers should follow.

 

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op_ed/view.bg?articleid=1180375