matttyl
Footballguy
People still "game" the Massachusetts individual market, happens all the time and will continue to as long as there is guaranteed issue with no pre-ex.Ramsay Hunt Experience said:Based upon a quick review of the executive summary and the entry for Massachusetts, you seem to be misreading this report. From what I see, that report isn't evaluating systems like the ACA at all. It is evaluating the implementation of Guaranteed Issue and Community Rating in several states in the 1990s. As the report states, "[g]uaranteed issue encourages people to wait until they have health problems to buy insurance." This was a big problem with many 1990s reforms, including one in Massachusetts. But Massachusetts instituted another reform, RomneyCare, in 2006. As people may gather, one feature of RomneyCare, which is shared by the ACA, is designed to directly address the chief problem with Guaranteed Issue. The free rider problem identified above. That feature is the individual mandate.
I can find very little criticism of RomneyCare from you own source. When discussing the 2006 Massachusetts reform the paper states, "[v]arious reports indicate a reduction of the individual market premium, due to the merger with the small group market, ranging from 20% to 33%."
I can find several other sources that report the same thing. Individual insurance premiums in Massachusetts have gone down at a time when they have increased throughout the country.
I'll read the other case studies a bit more closely, but I'm reasonably certain that Massachusetts was the first, and the only, state to enact an individual mandate. Which makes your source not particularly useful to this discussion.
Also, Massachusetts has the highest insurance premiums of any state in the country. Even in they drop 2% in a year, they are already considerably higher than the average nationwide. You can't claim that "prices are dropping" when they are already starting at a much, much higher spot.