Ohio might be the next state to go for expanding its healthcare spending well beyond its ability to pay for it, Cincinnati.com reports:
"If the entire plan proposed to Strickland by a special task force he appointed last year is adopted, it would cost $1.5 billion to $2 billion a year and likely would require new taxes. He hopes to cover about 500,000 of the 1.3 million uninsured Ohioans by the end of his first term in 2011."
And you can't blow up a state budget with new entitlement spending without bringing up Massaschusetts. This quote from the same story should be instructive:
"In Massachusetts, for example, projected costs for a 2006 plan aimed at universal health coverage have doubled to about $1.35 billion a year, but the plan has covered about 350,000 more people."
""It's unbelievably exciting but it's killing us financially," said Jim Conway, senior vice president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston, who spoke to the Greater Cincinnati Health Council in June."
It's way past time to dial back government involvement in health insurance contracts. The Nanny State watches people sign all kinds of legal agreements on their own every day without breaking the bank expanding government programs. Who decided health insurance contracts needed such intense regulation and subsequent taxpayer subsidization?
Either way, if Ohio follows through on this it may help Kentucky in regional economic competitiveness rankings.
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