Wall Street Journal Letter to the Editor Disputes Claims About Massachusetts Health Insurance Law
In a Jan. 31, 2007, Wall Street Journal opinion piece "condemning Massachusetts's landmark effort to insure our citizens," Shikha Dalmia, a senior analyst at the Reason Foundation, could not "wait (for the facts) to render a verdict" on the state's health insurance law, Jon Kingsdale, executive director for the Massachusetts Health Insurance Connector Authority, writes in a Journal letter to the editor.
Kingsdale writes, "Dalmia claims that spending for our subsidized plan will cost 85% 'more than originally projected' during the next fiscal year," but the "governor's budget proposal calls for $869 million," and the "original estimate by the conference committee that wrote the legislation in 2006 pegged it at $725 million," adding, "That's 20%, not 85%." In addition, Kingsdale writes that while Dalmia "claims that inflated demand combined with onerous regulations triggered premium increases of 12%" for 2008, "premiums had been rising 12% or so prior to reform," and the state is "expecting that trend to moderate" under the health insurance law.
He continues, "As of July 1, 2007, the typical uninsured individual in Massachusetts could buy a policy that covered twice as much for half the premium as that person could have bought before reform," which is "one example of how we are helping to control costs, not increase them." Kingsdale also addresses Dalmia's claim "that the cheapest plan available to a couple in their 50s" costs $8,200. He writes that the coverage is "actually much less, and when the couple takes advantage of reform to buy it with pre-tax dollars, the price is nearer to one-half" of Dalmia's "assertion."
Kingsdale concludes, "Across the country, more and more people are going without health insurance every day," but in "just 18 months, Massachusetts has newly enrolled over 300,000." He adds, "Now there's a fact. And better yet, this one is true" (Kingsdale, Wall Street Journal, 2/7).
