Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney often touts his "market-based" healthcare reform in Massachusetts as a model for the country, but the plan, which was being implemented as he left office, is already showing signs of significant problems.

Sally C. Pipes, president and CEO of the Pacific Research Institute explored the program's growing problems in a commentary in the Tuesday Boston Globe.

MASSACHUSETTS'S UNIVERSAL healthcare law turned one in April. To survive, its guardians have had to make many changes, each of which has increased current and future government spending, increased the government's role in regulating the healthcare market, decreased individual responsibility to purchase insurance, and made certain that the plan will fall far short of achieving universal coverage.

The promise of the law was simple and seductive: Require people to purchase health insurance, make the insurance affordable, or at least tax-deductible, and then fine those who don't comply. Subsidies could come from the current money devoted to the Uncompensated Care Pool and the federal taxpayers. Universal coverage, then, would be achieved with little new spending.

Numerous problems existed with this plan, but the fairy tale quality appealed to politicians and the national media, so it passed to much fanfare.

Pipes calls the Romney healthcare plan's fiscal structure "a gourmet recipe for runaway spending."

The system is set up to tax the young and healthy -- who typically have both less income and less wealth -- to subsidize those who are older and less healthy. One goal, according to the organization Health Care For All, is "to create a statewide credible risk pool, so healthy people 'prepay' toward their medical care."

The problem with this is that the young and healthy, who are already prepaying for Medicare out of every paycheck, may object to this new form of taxation. According to the state's own data, it's not the young and healthy who use the Uncompensated Care Pool or who abuse emergency rooms, so the real point is the prepay or taxation and subsidization of a so-called risk pool.

So one year in, we have a plan that, even if no more concessions to liberal advocates are made, falls 20 percent short of its stated goal. Its costs have already increased by at least $13 million and are on track to skyrocket by some multiple of this once the doctors' bills start coming in. Happy Birthday.

Romney's market-based healthcare reform might not be be the political asset Romney was hoping for.