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Maryland Taxpayers Association Speaks Out on The Maryland Citizens Health Initiative (MCHI) single-payer proposal - a stealth move to put Maryland's $20 billion Maryland health care industry wholly under state government control - has tax consequences dwarfing all other issues MTA is likely to confront in the near future. A lobbying group called the Maryland Citizens Health Initiative (MCHI) - which bills itself as 'the largest coalition ever amassed in Maryland" -is pushing a drastic proposal for a single-payer health system. Plan Would Increase Costs and Lower Quality. The proposed plan would have disastrous effects on the costs and quality of health care in the State of Maryland. According to a report by the independent Lewin firm, which analyzed the complex proposal for MCHI, "[t]he impact of the single-payer plan on employer health spending will differ for workers and retirees. Private employers will spend about $4.2 billion on coverage for workers and dependents under current trends in 2001. Under a single-payer plan employers no longer pay this cost, but instead pay a tax equal to 6.3 percent of payroll, which would be equal to about $4.4 billion in 1998. Of this $4.4 billion in tax payments, about $457 million would be paid by firms that currently do not provide coverage." Because MCHI has so many implications for the well-being of the Maryland economy (apart from its effects on costs and quality of care), MTA is moving to alert the public to this danger. By doing so, MTA helps confound a bad scheme with terrible tax consequences. Fighting the Single-Payer Proposal. MTA's early November Annapolis breakfast with Heritage Foundation health-care expert Robert Moffit - followed by a more formal meeting previewing Loyola Professor Tom DiLorenzo's Alternatives to Socialized Health Care in Maryland - gave your officers and board members current intelligence not only on the MCHI and its significant tax consequences, but also on marketable alternatives to that statist scheme. The Maryland FREE organization had sponsored the DiLorenzo report. Acting on our early warning about the MCHI threat and working closely with Rocky Worcester's Maryland Business for Responsive Government (MBRG), MTA representatives participated in MBRG's November 17 meeting at BWI , "New Directions in Health Care Reform in Maryland." At that watershed meeting - with Maryland House of Delegates Speaker Casper Taylor on the program - the Progressive Policy Institute's Jeff Lemieux showcased a consumer-choice free-market proposal wholeheartedly supported by Heritage Foundation expert Robert Moffit. The clear fingerprints of the business-sensitive yet Democrat-linked PPI on a consumer-choice free-market national health care solution gives "cover" to the Maryland General Assembly leadership as they work along parallel lines to reform Maryland's own tangled health-care system. During the session, Taylor indicated that he was favorably disposed to no-frills mandate-free health-insurance, inexpensive enough to meet the basic needs of many currently uninsured Free State residents. He made this clear in response to a question from MTA vice-president Richard Falknor. MTA's has asked the Heritage Foundation to flesh out the essentials and identify the cost-savings of such a basic health-insurance policy. Health-financing experts generally agree that Maryland's many mandates requiring health insurance to cover a variety of marginal procedures and services makes Maryland health insurance too expensive for many families. Taylor, a Cumberland Democrat, also said there was no more sentiment today for a single-payer plan than there was in 1992 when he held hearings on his own consumer- choice plan. The leader of Maryland's House of Delegates said the Assembly's health committees must 'go back to the drawing boards' and begin hearings this winter. Bottom Line on the Tax-Heavy MCHI. Those close to the process report that the MCHI single-payer scheme has little current appeal to the General Assembly leadership. Massachusetts voted down the first steps to such a scheme in November 2000, and in the state of Washington proponents of a greater state role in practicing medicine were not able to get enough signatures to get on the November ballot. MTA's plan: support Speaker Taylor's efforts to reform Maryland
tangled health-care system increasing consumer choice and free-market
solutions, and diminishing intrusive regulation of physicians and patients
alike; stay vigilant about MCHI proposals for state-controlled medicine
that may reappear in new guises (e.g., as a "multi-payer" plan,
but with government still in charge) or about their original single-payer
scheme if it suddenly gathers new strength. MTA believes there are credible alternatives to state-run health care. See the following for more information: Draft PPI Proposal for Heath Insurance Coverage At "New Directions in Health Care Reform in Maryland," a November 17, 2000 meeting sponsored by Maryland Business for Responsive Government, Progressive Policy Institute's Jeff Lemieux presented a consumer-choice, free-market, "bare bones" proposal. Heritage Foundation Papers on Health Care Reform Follow the evolution of thinking on new health care solutions on Heritage Foundation's key issues page on health care. • Building Bureaucracy and Invading Patient Privacy: Maryland's Health Care Regulations (1998) by Dale Snyder. "Excellent medical care, increased access, and a return in value for investment can be achieved only by sound policies that rely less on bureaucratic regulation and more on consumer choice and price competition. Legislators across the United States can learn what not to do by examining Maryland's efforts to micromanage health care through a burgeoning bureaucracy. Instead of adding more mandates and rules to an already top-heavy regulatory structure, state legislators should focus on policies that improve health care opportunities for workers and their families...." • Why The Maryland Consumer Choice Health Plan Could Be A Model For Health Care Reform (1992), by Robert E. Moffit, Ph.D. Background on Maryland's health care debate, featuring Maryland House of Delegates Speaker Casper Taylor's consumer choice health care proposal of the early 1990s. This exemplary proposal, although never enacted, may provide groundwork for an alternative in Maryland's debate over single-payer plans during the next few years. • The Rise and Repeal of the Washington State Health Plan: Lessons for America's State Legislators (1997), by Robert Cihak, M.D. Bob Williams Peter J. Ferrara. "Taxpayers in Washington State were among the first Americans to be enrolled forcibly in—and then to escape from—a Clinton-style health care plan. At the height of the Clinton Administration's health care reform fever in 1993, Washington's legislators passed their own state-level plan: the Washington Health Services Act of 1993," similar to the current MCHI single-payer proposal in Maryland. The plan proved "unworkable" and produced a "citizens' revolt" and repeal just 18 months after it was enacte News Items Concerning Health Care Reform * Pete DuPont on "Beaver State Bolshevism":"To pay for
these 'free' services, Oregon would increase its top income-tax rate--which
applies to married couples earning as little as $12,500--to as much as
17% from an already high 9%, giving Oregon by far the highest income tax
rate in the country." |