Holding your nose already?
At their core, both plans depended on a deal with special interest groups. In Massachusetts, Romney needed and got buy-in from the powerful hospital, insurance, and corporate lobbies. To win that support, he could not fundamentally change the way they did business. Instead, private insurance companies got more customers thanks to the individual mandate, hospitals kept their beds full, and corporations that failed to insure employees paid only a token penalty of $295 per worker.
Because free-riding corporations were not effectively taxed, Massachusetts had to divert money from the free-care pool that finances safety-net hospitals. And because serious cost containment was not part of the original package, premium costs in the Commonwealth have risen far faster than nationally — by 10.3 percent in 2009, the most recent year available, according to a June 2011 state report
http://articles.boston.com/2011-06-28/bostonglobe/29713400_1_insurance-cost-containment-cost-savings
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