Harrop's hope for Healthcare - Hawaii-style

In the Denver Post’s PERSPECTIVE (11/28/04), Froma Harrop claims that “there’s a good argument to be made that the nation’s businesses should not be paying for everyone’s health care”. Unfortunately, that’s the only accurate statement she makes in her column.
While Harrop touts Hawaii’s mandated employer – paid health coverage, she neglects to point out that Hawaii: has some of the highest health care administrative costs in the country. The state ranks #1 nation-wide in hospital costs as a percent of total hospital spending. The employer-mandate has caused serious trouble for Hawaii small businesses. In 1997, it ranked 49th in income growth rate, 43rd in employment growth, 1st in business bankruptcies, and 48th in new business growth. Employers have restricted wage increases, reduced benefits, and raised prices in order to offset health care costs. Employers are also hiring more part-time workers. Patients are beginning to feel the effects of health care rationing. The state is short on acute care hospital beds and nursing home beds. Furthermore, in 1997, the state only had one MRI scanner per one million people. The MRI scanner shortage in Hawaii is so severe, physicians encourage patients to fly to the mainland for immediate treatment (Source: NCPA.) If, according to Harrop, the sky hasn’t fallen on Hawaii’s mandated employer health system – it certainly looks like a dark volcanic cloud is gathering.
Despite the demagogic lecturing of ill-informed, Socialist’s like Harrop, California voters defeated this type of dangerous social/economic engineering. Hopefully the citizens of Washington will vote to affirm our free-market, free-enterprise system and defeat mandated employer-paid health as well.