RomneyCare expanded demand for health services without increasing supply-therefore costs went up $4.3 billion and 18,000 jobs lost.

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"“Mandating health insurance coverage and expanding the demand for health services without increasing supply drove up costs. Economics 101 tells us that."" Projects ObamaCare will cost US 950,000 jobs.

9/15/11, "Report: ‘Romneycare’ a jobs killer," Boston Herald, Frank Quaratiello

"The Bay State’s controversial 2006 universal health-care plan — also known as “Romneycare” — has cost Massachusetts more than 18,000 jobs, according to an exclusive blockbuster study that could provide ammo to GOP rivals of former Gov. Mitt Romney as he touts his job-creating chops on the campaign trail.

“Mandating health insurance coverage and expanding the demand for health services without increasing supply drove up costs. Economics 101 tells us that,” said Paul Bachman, research director at Suffolk University’s Beacon Hill Institute, the conservative think tank that conducted the study. The Herald obtained an exclusive copy of the findings.

“The ‘shared sacrifice’ needed to provide universal health care includes a net loss of jobs, which is attributable to the higher costs that the measure imposed,” said David Tuerck, the institute’s executive director.

“The United States is looking down the barrel of this with national health-care reform,” Bachman told the Herald, noting that Massachusetts’ first-in-the-nation heath-care overhaul — a hallmark of the Romney administration — was a template for President Obama’s national health-care law....

Bachman projected that so-called Obamacare would

• drive up health-care costs $77.5 billion nationwide

• and cost the nation 950,000 jobs.

Despite Romney’s vaunted business acumen as a successful venture capitalist, Bachman said the former governor “was a little naive about what would become of the law.”

The Beacon Hill Institute study found that, on average, Romneycare:

•    cost the Bay State 18,313 jobs;

•    drove up total health insurance costs in Massachusetts by $4.311 billion;

slowed the growth of disposable income per person by $376; and

•    reduced investment in Massachusetts by $25.06 million.

“We think it’s very pertinent and very similar to the health-care law that was passed nationally — it’s a case study,” Bachman said. “This is what happened in Massachusetts, and this is what can be expected from the national health-care act.”...

He also noted the state’s health-care costs have been heavily subsidized by billions of dollars in

• federal aid through a Medicaid waiver program.

“While the federal government has helped Massachusetts pay for its health-care law, there is no higher entity for the federal government to go to except the taxpayers,” he said. “They can’t go to the United Nations.”"


via Weasel Zippers