Back in my early days I spent a lot of time predicting what would happen after Massachusetts passed comprehensive health care reform. It sucks being right sometimes. On the bright side, I no longer live there.
He’s right about that: Health care was 23% of the state fisc in 2000, and 25% in 2006, but it has climbed to 41% for 2013. On current trend it will roll past 50% around 2020—and that best case scenario assumes Mr. Patrick’s price controls work as planned. (They won’t.) In real terms the state’s annual health-care budget is 15% larger than it was in 2007, while transportation has plunged by 22%, public safety by 17% and education by 7%. Today Massachusetts spends less on roads, police and schools after adjusting for inflation than it did in 2007.
If they or we really want to go bankrupt, why not include a free two-lobster dinner with every semiannual doctor visit, along with the feel-good session with the psychoanalyst? Plus a free tank of ethanol, and some grease for the wind turbines next to jb’s back yard?
I read in the middle column of the Journal that Boston has a crusade to trim the fat from Bostonians. But is that fat not a response both to the cold, and to a history going back to the Pilgrims being hungry and cold? Maybe lower heating oil prices will do more to slim down Bay State residents. And how do we get lower heating oil prices? Looking for hands raised….
Remember too Harry that new scientific evidence is showing that mild obesity is not detrimental to long-term health outcomes, but that mild under-weightness actually is.
