Romneycare under attack

Rick Perry has decided to attack Mitt Romney for the health care reforms that he implemented while Governor of Massachusetts. The attacks seem to be based on the fact that the ACA passed under President Obama was modeled after the Massachusetts reforms which, when considered as a package, does not poll very well (especially among Republicans).

Perry has been making claims about how much "Romneycare" cost Americans which runs counter the the reports on health care reform by the CBO. Even if these claims are true there is one very important statistic in this debate that Rick Perry is ignoring - results.

While cost maybe a major concern for most Americans when going to see the doctor I would guess it would fall a distant second to getting better. Over the past several years a number of states have implemented some type of government funded health care reform trending towards universal health care. Below is a list of these states and how they stack up to other states when considering patient outcomes (1 being the best and 50 being the worst).

Minnesota - 1
Massachusetts - 3
Iowa - 4
Vermont - 5
Connecticut - 7
Colorado - 9
New York - 11
Oregon - 13
New Jersey - 14
Wisconsin - 15
California - 16
Maine - 20
Kansas - 21
Pennsylvania - 31

It should also be noted that number 2 on this list is Hawaii which has had their own health care mandate in place since 1974. For those of you keeping score at home the state of Texas, which Rick Perry is the governor of, ranks ahead of only one of these states at 26th.

I concede that it is certainly possible that it is fluke that all of the top 5 and 12 out of the top 16 states when it comes to health care outcomes happen to be those that are moving towards universal health care systems. But when you consider how low the US health care ranking is when compared to other nations that do offer universal health care and combine that with the rankings above there seems to be a correlation between implementing aspects of universal health care and improved patient outcomes.

The question should be, when you go to the hospital, would you prefer that they save you money or save your life? Rick Perry is betting that you pick money.