The Boston Sunday Globe’s lead editorial affirms the conclusions of the Mass Taxpayer’s Foundation that health reform has been affordable for Massachusetts. Excerpt:
FOR ALL THE fiscal problems the Commonwealth now faces, its three-year-old universal health insurance reform cannot be blamed for driving up state government costs uncontrollably. That is the conclusion of a study released last week by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, the watchdog group that is usually quick to expose state budget-busters. At a time when Congress is weighing its own health reform bill, the study debunks the notion that health reform is just a Big Dig in scrubs.
The study estimates that reform is costing the state an extra $350 million a year. The foundation finds that amount “relatively modest and well within early projections of how much the state would have to spend to implement reform.” The recession has hurt the state’s ability to sustain the gains of health reform, just as it has curbed funding for other state programs. But the foundation applauds the achievements of health reform “for so few new public dollars.”
