Universal health care failing in Massachusetts

NY Times:

The new state budget in Massachusetts eliminates health care coverage for some 30,000 legal immigrants to help close a growing deficit, reversing progress toward universal coverage just as Congress looks to the state as a model for overhauling the nation’s health care system.

The affected immigrants, permanent residents who have had green cards for less than five years, are now covered under Commonwealth Care, a subsidized insurance program for low-income residents that is central to the groundbreaking health care law enacted here in 2006.

Critics of the cut, which would save an estimated $130 million, say it unfairly targets taxpaying residents and threatens the state’s health care experiment at a critical time.

“It either sends the message that health care reform cannot be done, period,” said Eva Millona, executive director of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, “or it opens the door to doing it halfway and excluding immigrants from the process.”

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It is ironic that they are picking on legal immigrants while ignoring the fact that illegal immigrants are taking advantage of the system. What do you want to bet that health care providers are prohibiting from asking immigration status?

But, the fundamental problem is that the cost of universal health care is too high for even liberal states like Massachusetts. Transferring that cost to the federal government is not going to solve the problem, but will dramatically increase the national deficit.