Apologists for Obama's wealthcare plan for the HMOs and health insurance companies have been citing Mitt Romney's Republican wealthcare plan in Massachusetts as a "success." They just don't say who it is a success for.

Thanks to Romney's wealthcare system, Massachusetts has the highest premiums in the country. Last fall those greedy corporations raised premiums 7-12%.

Corporate greed has gotten so insatiable that the state of Massachusetts is considering loosening up on the fines imposed on people who can't afford insurance. (Boston Globe 3/12/10)

State regulators said yesterday that they will probably change the complex formula they use to determine how many Massachusetts residents face a tax penalty for not having health insurance, because spiraling costs are making coverage unaffordable for too many people.

Each year, the Massachusetts Health Insurance Connector Authority board updates the formula it uses to determine whether health insurance is affordable for individuals, couples, and families and whether people in each group should face a tax penalty for not having coverage.

The state’s landmark 2006 health law requires nearly everyone to have health insurance or to pay a stiff tax penalty.

The "spiraling costs" are for insurance premiums. The costs of care haven't changed much at all. Romney's wealthcare plan has been such a disaster that even he is starting to disown it.

Keep in mind that fact that HMO and health insurance premiums have very little to do with actual costs. The costs of care provided are only a fraction of the money collected by these larcenous corporations. The only restraint on premiums is what these evil corporations think they can get away with.

As I have pointed out before, if Obama's fines for people who can't afford the defective products of the HMO/health insurance industry are allowed to go into effect as scheduled in 2014, the result will by dramatic increases in insurance premiums. Sadly, the only restraint on outlandishly high premium prices is the ability for some people to opt out. Without that, the sky is the limit for these corporate thieves.

Obviously, Medicare for All or some other single payer plan is the only real solution to the lack of care and wildly exaggerated prices people are facing in our country. The only obstacles are bought politicians like Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, John "Keating Five" McCain, and the rest of the crooks in DC.

Photo: madhavaji