Earlier in the week I raised questions about the success of Romeny’s health care reforms in Massachsuetts (see here and here). A Romney policy advisor offers this response:

1) As Governor Romney is fond of saying, “facts are stubborn things.” The fact is that since healthcare reform was passed just over a year ago, the number of uninsured and the price of the average individual market health insurance policy in MA have decreased substantially. Specifically, over 300,000 previously uninsured residents of the state now have health insurance and the cost of an individual market health insurance policy for the average uninsured resident in Massachusetts has decreased by nearly 50%. All of this was done without new taxes. (2) Critiques like those written by Mr. Tanner are typical of a “sky is falling” mentality about the Massachusetts reform law that seek to bury the patient before he’s flatlined. Critics like Mr. Tanner want to condemn the reforms as a failure just three days after the individual mandate has gone into effect. Critics want to say that Governor Romney did the wrong thing by working with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature to lead reform even though hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts residents are now getting health insurance and, by extension, better health care. Such critiques are not only premature–they are simply irresponsible. (3) Markets don’t work overnight. People will look back on Gov. Romney’s leadership on this issue in, say, 10 years and applaud the work that he did to allow the free market to bring down the price of health insurance. By deregulating and reforming the market, we will see further reductions (even greater) in health insurance premiums than we have already seen–but such changes do take time and we ought to be patient. (4) Finally, bear in mind that any implementation hiccups are primarily the responsibility of the current (Patrick) Administration. If there are cost overruns, inefficiencies, etc., it’s very hard to blame someone who’s not in power to do anything about it anymore. Of course, Governor Romney put the framework in place–but that framework was one that allowed for then-current state revenues and federal assistance to cover the low-income uninsured and for market reform to work its magic in reducing costs and improving quality for everyone.

Me: I agree that it may be too soon to judge the practical effects of RomneyCare. In particular it is a fair point that it may take health care markets some time to respond to the various reforms. I also think it is a fair point that Romney should not be blamed for the Patrick Administration’s implementation. On the other hand, Romney should have been aware that any reforms he got enacted would eventually be controlled by more liberal and less market oriented officials. If a government program is only good when controlled by the “right” people, then it is not a good government program. Further, I do not think it is “irresponsible” to criticize a program that expanded health insurance coverage if this expansion came at the expense of other values. I would also be very interested if Team Romney or others have responses to the more detailed critique of RomneyCare offered by David Hyman in this study.