ObamaCare is very similar to the healthcare law introduced by the last Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Mass. Actual RomneyCare is in some ways more liberal than ObamaCare. I'm not aware of any terrible consequences in MA. Why do so many people expect dire consequences with ObamaCare?
Because Romneycare is
not the ACA. It is far better, though it is still too much government regulation in a free marketplace for my taste. The ACA is going to close down major insurance companies, in many cases firms that have been on the financial landscape for over a century, because of the completely unreasonable and probably illegal interferences in the free market it imposes.
Romneycare imposed high deductibles to maintain affordability, thus helping constrain medical spending by making health insurance consumers cost conscious. At the same time, it provides catastrophic coverage under the same policy purchased with the high deductible. It actually included a clause to reduce the high deductible in the case of critical care events, whereas the ACA puts all catastrophic care decisions in the hands of a bunch of bean-counters.
Though Romneycare imposed a mandate on owning health care insurance, it didn't put the marketplace in the hands of the government, but left it in the free market where it belongs, thus encouraging individual responsibility to provide their families protection in the event of illness without getting the government involved in the market, where it does not belong.
Romneycare has no employer mandate. There shouldn't be either an employer or individual mandate in my opinion, but lack of an employer mandate in Romneycare discourages bean-counters from getting involved in health care, as they tend to gravitate to situations where cost controls are of concern to the employer providing the coverage.
There is no tax surcharge on higher incomes under Romneycare. There shouldn't be. No one should be punished for making money.
Romneycare isn't the ACA, and vice versa. The claim that it is has been trumpeted by the Great Pretender and the media, but the claim is and of itself a bold-faced lie.
