Mass. Taxpayers Foundation: Health Reform Gets Bang For The Buck

When the cost-conscious Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation tells you something is a good deal — or as my Boston-accented dad likes to say, a bah-gain — you can be pretty sure you're getting your money's worth.

WBUR's Martha Bebinger reports that the group has just put out a new report on Massachusetts health reform that could act as an important corrective for claims on the national political scene that the reform has been a budget-buster. Read her full report here. It begins:

Outside Massachusetts, talk show hosts and politicians frequently blast the state’s health coverage law as a “budget buster.”

“It has been an abject failure,” Senator Rick Santorum told the audience during a presidential primary debate in January, directing his comments towards former Mass. Gov. Mitt Rommey. “He’s stood by the fact that it’s $8 billion more expensive than the current law.”

That’s just one of the myths the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation (MTF) hopes to debunk with a report out Friday. The facts will help. Michael Widmer, president of the MTF, says the state has spent just $91 million more a year since 2006 to cover the uninsured than it was spending before the law passed.

“That’s a very tiny additional costs to taxpayers for huge benefits,” argues Widmer. “No way can one say that this has been anything close to a budget buster. The facts put a lie to this myth.”