Gov't Care in Maine: The Pilot Test That Crashed

Most Americans want to know that a government program on which their lives literally depend actually works, but pilot tests of Gov't Care in Hawaii, Oregon, Massachusetts, Tennessee, and Maine have been miserable failures.

Take Maine's government-run universal health care plan, "the most similar to the plans circulating on Capital Hill," as it is described in Investor's Business Daily by Kerri Houston Toloczko of the Institute for Liberty:

The name of Maine's government-run universal health care plan "Dirigo Health" is derived from the state's motto — "to lead." Fitting, as this failed attempt at government health care has led its people right off a cliff.

Maine's universal coverage plan is most similar to the plans circulating on Capitol Hill. It was proposed in May 2003 by Democrat Gov. John Baldacci and passed a scant four weeks later. Much like the $787 billion federal "stimulus" plan that passed Congress in February of this year, nobody read the Dirigo plan either.

While greasing the pipeline for quick passage of Dirigo Health, the governor assured that all of Maine's 128,000 uninsured would be covered by 2009, the bureaucracy would be streamlined and health costs lowered, and the plan would fund itself based on system savings with no tax increases — a similar claim to what President Obama has said about a new federal plan.

Six years after it was passed, it has insured only 3% — roughly 3,400 — of the 128,000 promised.

By 2007, the system was so broke that it closed to new enrollees. It still has not reopened and has also cut and capped benefits. The "streamlined" bureaucracy has cost the state's taxpayers $17 million in administrative costs to cover 9,600 people, leading one to wonder if there are more bureaucrats in the system than enrollees.

Systemwide insurance costs have increased 74% since Dirigo was passed, and the governor and legislature have tried — unsuccessfully — to raise taxes to fund the system.

Dirigo's more "efficient" bureaucracy started out with an aggregator agency for health records and a cost administration agency, but it now includes numerous councils to study this, that and anything else bureaucrats can conceive.

These agencies also dictate to providers how much they can spend on new technologies and diagnostic machines even though these costs are borne by physicians and hospitals and not the state.

Dirigo has failed because it lacks market forces, ignores the nature of the uninsured and was more interested in bloating its bureaucracy than providing care to patients.

A math genius I am not, but if the Maine program's cost for administration alone is $1770.83 per person, imagine the cost per taxpayer to pay for this program with medical expenses added in. Consider that, for 2009, 47% of taxpayers will pay no income tax at all: about half of America is paying for the other half.

In terms of the Maine Gov't Care bill, your family of four would pay $7,080 in taxes to cover just the administrative fees for Gov't Care for your own family members, and you'd also owe another $7,080 to cover a family of four who pay no income taxes.

Whew! A tax bill of $14,160 per family of four just to cover the administrative costs of Gov't Care in Maine. More or less. That is, if Maine's health care program actually provided health care to Maine's citizens. Which it doesn't.

Of course, what the term "administrative costs" really means is "salaries and benefits for gov't workers" who earn, on average, almost twice that earned by people in the private sector, counting those great pensions and other benefits:

It is fair to say that very few of these people become unemployed during times of financial stress (in fact, unemployment offices and such hire more gov't workers to meet the greater demand), and government workers tend to vote for whoever offers those great pay-backs to unions and to vote against candidates who might reduce their salaries, pensions, and other benefits down to a non-government-job level.

In actual fact, not every single taxpayer would have to pick up the bill for another citizen (or maybe illegal alien) who doesn't pay any income taxes. But some poor sap of a taxpayer picks up that bill, maybe for 2 or 3 or 4 or more other citizens who don't pay taxes.

With Gov't Care track records like this, it is not possible that Congress has the health of Americans in mind as they feverishly push ObamaCare through Congress. What they actually have in mind is obvious to all, including to most of those who support ObamaCare.

Oh, and the identity of the "lone Republican on the Senate Finance Committee that's open to the Democrat-backed bill expected to move to the Senate floor"?

Olympia Snowe, the Senior U.S. Senator from Maine.
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