What does Massachusetts do when Romneycare costs too Much

The quick answer is blame the physicians and pass draconian,liberty crushing,contract abrogating, legislation to control medical care costs and physicians ' practices. See here for details from the WSJ regarding a bill passed by the legislature in Massachusetts awaiting the governor's signature.

Here is what the WSJ says regarding the physicians' control commission (my term for it):

An 11-member board known as the Health Policy Commission will use the data[ ED: data that the bill forces physicians to submit] to set and enforce rules to ensure that total Massachusetts health spending, public and private, grows no more than projected gross state product through 2017, and 0.5 percentage points lower thereafter. (And Paul Ryan's Medicare projections are unrealistic?)

No registered provider is allowed to make "any material change to its operations or governance structure," the bill says, without the commission's approval. The commission can also rewrite the terms of provider contracts with insurers and payment levels and methods if they are "deemed to be excessive."

Apparently for physicians to be "allowed " to practice they must submit the required economic data to the commission .

So a physician is not allowed to change the operation structure of his practice (whatever that means) without the approval of this board and so much for the sanctity of contract as this group can "rewrite" the physicians' contracts. This outrage would have a good fit in the descriptions of various frightening government actions found in Atlas Shrugged.

If this does not encourage docs reaching close to retirement age to retire early what would? At least physicians there can move to another state and seek refuge at least for a while until Obamacare costs reaches some levels when something like that is imposed nation wide.

We already have in the wings, awaiting its operational birth according to the ACA timetable,an organization that either already has or is ready to assume the power to control not only Medicare and Medicaid expenditure but all medical expenditures according to some nonsensical projections of what medical costs "should be" versus some fairy dust projection of GDP growth. Well why not, after all central economic planning worked out really well in the 20th century. This panel of Platonic Guardians is known as IPAB. See here for more on that.

Does anyone think we will hear howls of outrageous protests from such organizations as AMA and ACP? Another question- what does his legislative act do to retainer practices?


Addendum and update 8/21/2012 The governor has now signed the bill- so it is law.The tireless Dr. Douglas Peredia has read through the 349 page document and has extracted the key provisions (39 pages).See here.