The Public Option Disasters

From Blake Yount, Examiner.com: "There have been states that have tried a "public option" in conjunction with private health care that have been bitter failures."

TennCare, MassCare, and Keiki Care; Failed public health care options and the new American Dream

Yount examines TennCare, MassCare and Keiki Care.

TennCare

TennCare was instituted in Tennessee in 1994 and was supposed to keep health care costs down. Instead, businesses began dumping their employees into the public program as a cost saving measure for themselves. This took TennCare from $2.5 billion in taxes all the way to over $8 billion which threatened the fiscal stability of the entire state, and forced Governor Phil Bredesen in 2005 to cut 150,000 people out of the program, and reduce benefits for all that were left on the program.

MassCare

MassCare was implemented by Governor Mitt Romney in 2006, and has been a terrible burden on the people of Massachusetts. State Treasurer Timothy Cahill said that MassCare was "expensive, even in good times. In tough times, it just doesn't seem doable." Since its implementation, public health care spending has gone up 42%, and expenditures for low to moderate income Massachusetts residents have doubled from $630 million to $1.3 billion in 2009. Massachusetts has dropped their uninsured percentage to 2.6%, which is why the program has a positive perception, but human beings are not just percentage points. Even though they have cut their uninsured percentage in half, the residents of Massachusetts can no more afford primary care now than they could in 2006, as those enrolled in the government option are still forced to use the ER at a rate 14% greater than those on private insurance.

Hawaii's Keiki Care

Keiki Care was instituted in Hawaii in 2007, and was designed to cover 3,500 children that didn't have access to health care. Things don't go as planned when the government is at the helm, and 85% of children that ended up using Keiki Care had previously had private insurance. Parents saw the public option as a way to save money within their own families, (a rational decision) and immediately began dumping their private insurance in favor of the "free" public option. The state of Hawaii had teamed up with a large insurance company, and while this particular company became larger and richer, small insurance providers were aced out and suffered greatly thanks to Democrats instituting a big government, big business partnership in which they all get rich, and the average citizen suffers. The costs were so great in this instance, that the program had to be canceled within 7 months of its creation, thus leaving 3,500 Hawaiian children in the same predicament they were in less than a year earlier.

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