Coming Soon to a Health Care Industry Near You

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating discussion about how RomneyCare has worked out for Massachusetts. The bottom line is not so well. RomneyCare has wrought tremendous increases in the government plan and much higher costs.

Massachusetts spends more per capita on health care than any other state and therefore more than anywhere else in the industrialized world. Costs are 27% higher than the U.S. average, 15% higher when adjusted for the state's higher wages and its concentration of academic medical centers and specialists.

The sad truth is this is the direction ObamaCare is taking the entire nation. Central planning requires bureaucratic decision making without meaningful profit and loss calculations. Such decision-making is always less productive, which means higher costs and often lower quality. The health care status quo was bad. Increased centralization will make things worse.