The Lesson of State Health-Care Reforms

Margaret Barr / October 07, 2009

Peter Suderman, associate editor for Reason Magazine, has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the track record of Obamacare like reforms at the state level. The full article is posted below and as an added service we found all the studies mentioned and provided links to view them:

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously envisioned the states serving as laboratories, trying “novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” And on health care, that’s just what they’ve done.

Like participants in a national science fair, state governments have tested variants on most of the major components of the health-care reform plans currently being considered in Congress. The results have been dramatically increased premiums in the individual market, spiraling public health-care costs, and reduced access to care. In other words: The reforms have failed.

New York is exhibit A. In 1993, the state prohibited insurers from declining to cover individuals with pre-existing health conditions (“guaranteed issue”). New York also required insurers to charge those enrolled in their plans the same premium, regardless of health status, age or sex (“community rating”). The goal was to reduce the number (more…)