When is a good time?

Universal Healthcare is the feel good issue du jour for the Economic Left. Here in Vermont, it has taken the form of Catamount Healthcare.

The goal of Catamount Healthcare is to get the number of Vermonters who are uninsured for healthcare down from 9.6% (which is where it was when the program started in 2007) to 4% by 2010.

Now there are many ways of doing Universal Healthcare and Vermont's version does not suffer from the problem that Hawaii had when it decided it couldn't afford it.

Hawaii is dropping the only state universal child health care program in the country just seven months after it launched.

Gov. Linda Lingle's administration cited budget shortfalls and other available health care options for eliminating funding for the program. A state official said families were dropping private coverage so their children would be eligible for the subsidized plan.

"People who were already able to afford health care began to stop paying for it so they could get it for free," said Dr. Kenny Fink, the administrator for Med-QUEST at the Department of Human Services. "I don't believe that was the intent of the program."

Vermont requires that you have to take employer health insurance if they offer it and you have to be without private heathcare insurance for 12 consecutive months before you are eligible for the program.

And, to its credit, Vermont didn't fall victim to the failing of Massachusetts' attempt at Universal Healthcare either.

To much fanfare from both right and left in 2006, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to require all residents to buy health insurance. A new state health insurance clearinghouse was created, with taxpayers subsidizing those who couldn’t afford to buy coverage. Then Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, promised that “every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance.” Yet just two years later, Romney’s much-heralded “solution” — touted by many as the model for a national program — has become an embarrassing flop.

Just a year after the universal coverage law passed, The New York Times reported, state insurers were already jacking up rates to twice the national average. According to Dr. Paul Hsieh, a physician and founding member of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine, 43 mandatory benefits — including those that many people did not want or need, such as invitro fertilization — raised the costs of coverage for  Massachusetts residents by as much as 56 percent, depending upon an individual’s income status. So much for “affordable” health care.

Small businesses with more than 10 employees were required to provide health insurance or pay an extra fee to subsidize uninsured low-income residents, yet the overall costs of the program increased more than $400 million — 85 percent higher than original projections. To make up the difference, payments to health care providers were slashed, so many doctors and dentists in Massachusetts began refusing to take on new patients. In the state with the highest physician/patient ratio in the nation, some people now have to wait more than a year for a simple physical exam.

So good on them for that.

But, unfortunately, Catamount Healthcare isn't the Silver bullet either. For Catamount to work

It needs people on private insurance to pay the bills of the people who are otherwise "covered."  This is done through the magic of something called the "cost shift."

And the problem with that is obvious, especially in hard economic times: When people are losing their jobs, there are fewer people to "cost shift" with and more demands on services. Catamount Healthcare was under-funded to begin with, in order to keep the cost to the uninsured down, but in good times there's money to throw at it. Now, though, things are different.

A year ago lawmakers at the Statehouse wanted to expand Catamount Health, the state-sponsored insurance plan, but now many wonder if it will survive cuts to the state budget....

During this economic recession, programs like Catamount, which subsidizes the cost of insurance for some Vermonters, is needed more than ever, Maier said. Pushing people off the state program, he said, would only increase the number of uninsured patients in Vermont and would cost more in the long run. It would also be a major step backwards for a state known for its progressive health care initiatives.

But the only alternative is to raise taxes during a recession which pretty much everyone understands to be a bad idea. If cutting back on subsedized Healthcare coverage at a time when people can't afford it is the wrong time to cut back, when is the right time? When we can afford it?

Regardless of the problems, our Representative to the US House thinks Vermont's plan should be replicated Nationally.

U.S. Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) hopes to use his new assignment to a key congressional committee both to advance Vermont’s interests and to introduce Vermont solutions to national legislation on energy, climate change and health-care reform.

Welch called his recent appointment to the House Energy and Commerce Committee “a win-win” for the state that gives Vermont “a seat at the table” in as Congress takes on major new challenges under the new presidential administration.

He said he hopes to make some Vermont initiatives — such as the Clean Energy Fund to promote transition to alternative energy sources, and Catamount Healthcare and the Blueprint for Health as steps toward universal coverage — templates for broader, federal legislation....

But the fact is, we do not have a viable model for Universal Healthcare yet. Hawaii's model doesn't work. Massachusetts model doesn't work and Vermont's model doesn't work.

It just goes to show that empirical evidence just does not affect some people.

Which is why Vermont never considers cutting taxes during a recession.

But it's always a good time to raise them.