Health care reform in Massachusetts has never been just about Massachusetts. It wasn’t when Mitt Romney, Robert Travaglini and Sal DiMasi pushed through a blueprint for national universal health care, or when the White House cribbed Romney’s plan and ran with it. The Massachusetts model has always been a proving ground for something bigger — Romney even said as much, until he didn’t.
Because Massachusetts has been a lab for testing health care reform, there’s now intense national scrutiny around Beacon Hill’s latest stab at reform.
A 300-page bill the Legislature pushed through with little debate last week attempts to solve the affordability questions that Romney’s law left unanswered. The bill sets targets for health care spending by tying health care inflation to the growth of the state’s economy. It sets up a new $30 million agency to review health care spending. And it pushes publicly-insured patients away from a fee-for-service model. The bill’s architects argue it will save $200 billion over 15 years.
An editorial in yesterday’s New York Times calls the state’s inflation goal “a very ambitious target.” The Times gives a thorough airing to criticism from the left. Critics have argued that the state’s inability to enforce spending targets have left the bill toothless, but the paper is encouraged by the state’s ambition: “Don’t count Massachusetts out. It led the way in expanding coverage. What happens there on cost control will offer valuable lessons for the rest of the country.”
Today’s Wall Street Journal is certainly less charitable. “Boston’s latest adventure deserves particular scrutiny,” the paper writes, “since odds are its methods are coming soon to a hospital near you.” The Journal argues that Beacon Hill has “empowered [state bureaucrats] to control the practice and organization of medicine,” which, the paper claims, is the first step toward an outright government takeover of medicine. “The Massachusetts left complains that this government control is too weak because the delinquents can only be fined $500,000 for disobeying the commission’s dictates. But more teeth can always come in round three when this plan fails, as it will.”
The Times and the Journal come at the Massachusetts health care cost bill from diametrically opposed ideological positions, but both editorials zero in on the same issue — the bill’s lack of a hard enforcement mechanism. The Journal predicts failure, followed quickly by hard-edged socialism. The Times expects the combination of hard spending targets and a relatively light regulatory touch to prod health care providers, who are terrified of more heavy-handed approaches, into action.
It’s notable that while Massachusetts lawmakers were hammering out the final details of a bill to rein in Romney’s health care plan, Romney was in Israel, praising the country’s health care system. The irony is that Israeli health care runs on socialism and price controls. Romney’s praise prompted Slate’s Matt Yglesias to predict that the US will have to head in that direction if the country is serious about constraining health care spending: “All around the world you see lots of different models of health care finance, but one thing that all the systems have in common is that the systems where spending is low have very stringent price controls.” Beacon Hill’s new venture will attempt to break this mold, and deliver low spending without implementing iron spending caps. If it fails, Romney might see a lot more of an Israeli-style health care system than he’s bargained for.
–PAUL MCMORROW
BEACON HILL
The Herald editorial page scolds the Legislature for setting up a system where lawmakers can spend plausibly spend months away from the State House, because most are just following orders from leadership anyway: “None of the important business takes place inside the ornate chambers of either branch. Power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of legislative leaders, and it shows… There is something rotten in this system.”
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Requiring nonprofits to make payments in lieu of taxes is an idea that seems to be catching on. Boston launched the trend and now Haverhill and Lowell are considering it, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
Tom Menino’s jihad against Chick-fil-A has set back the cause of gay marriage, says Bloomberg View blogger Josh Barro in a Globe op-ed column.
NATIONAL POLITICS/WASHINGTON
Scholars and journalists are still unable to get access to 62 boxes of papers from Robert Kennedy’s tenure as attorney general in the 1960s. The Kennedy family, which has blocked public access to the papers, has said they are personal documents, but the Globe reported on Sunday that the papers cover, among other topics, once-secret military and intelligence activities that Kennedy oversaw.
US lawmakers file legislation exempting medal winners at Olympics from income taxes on their winnings — $25,000 for gold, $15,000 for silver, and $10,000 for bronze, the Los Angeles Times reports.
ELECTION 2012
Mitt Romney is running Spanish-language TV ads denouncing the federal health care law — a curious move, reports the Globe, since polls show overwhelming support for the law among Hispanics. Meanwhile, Romney’s Harry Reid problem isn’t going away anytime soon, even though the GOP is leaning on Reid as hard as it possibly can.
The National Review says Romney can only make a bold enough statement by picking US Rep. Paul Ryan or Sen. Marco Rubio as his vice presidential candidate.
Sen. Scott Brown attacks Elizabeth Warren for suggesting the US needs to follow the lead of China on infrastructure development, presumably with another stimulus program, NECN reports. The Sunday Globe offers a lengthy look at Brown’s less-than-idyllic childhood.
Keller@Large taps his go-to body language expert to look at US Rep. John Tierney, President Obama, and Romney, among others.
David Steinhof and Elizabeth Childs, two GOP hopefuls running for Barney Frank’s seat, debated a variety of issues in Fall River without the third contender, Sean Bielat.
NATION
Six people are dead following a shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin that authorities have labeled an act of “domestic terrorism.”
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
The Massachusetts congressional delegation pushes for disaster relief for the fishing industry, NECN reports.
The Associated Press begins a four-part series looking at the diminishing benefits of Social Security. Via The Patriot Ledger.
EDUCATION
In an editorial, the Globe says Boston schools Superintendent Carol Johnson should name an independent, outside investigator to look into the case of a school headmaster whose cause she championed even after he was arrested on domestic assault charges.
Charter schools have been slow to open in Metro West, but that may be changing as the number of applications to charter schools currently operating in the region increases.
Too cool for school: The Sandwich school district plans to issue iPads to all incoming freshmen and sophomores. US News & World Report says tablets are replacing laptops in classrooms around the country and tech companies are rushing to take advantage of the switch.
Salem State University is attracting college students from China, the Salem News reports.
HEALTH CARE
A Metro West Daily News editorial hails the state’s landmark cost containment law. One state rep compares the bill to “reading a manual to rebuild the engine of a Chrysler.”
TRANSPORTATION
Only two companies have submitted bids to operate the T’s commuter rail system, the Globe reports, raising concerns that the weak competition could translate into higher costs to the cash-strapped transit agency and its passengers.
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
Footprint Power closes a deal to buy the coal-fired Salem Power Station and replace it with a natural gas-fired plant, the Salem News reports.
A solar power plant planned for Lenox will likely be delayed because of the time needed to process the complex interconnection agreement with National Grid.
A special research vessel has come to Massachusetts waters to tag and track the Great White sharks spotted off Cape Cod.
The Cape Cod Times calls for the Legislature to work on legislation to improve the sustainability of the declining cod population — a problem that not too many lawmakers appear interested in.
The state Department of Environmental Protection is investigating a complaint by Raynham officials that a local recycling company is processing materials it is not permitted to.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE
US Rep. Steve Lynch is pushing for full investigation of the informant relationship convicted mobster Mark Rossetti enjoyed with the FBI.
Lynn police offers training to high school students to show them what law enforcement work is l
ike, the Item reports.
Tucson shooter Jared Loughner will enter a guilty plea today.
MEDIA
The Beat the Press panel questions the decision by the Boston Herald to use Howie Carr’s pejorative nickname for Elizabeth Warren on a front page headline for a supposed straight news story.
Bill Keller, who oversaw the New York Times’s Wikileaks coverage, springs to the defense of government leaks.