As you may recall, Massachusetts has a health care system (courtesy of Mitt Romney!) that's a lot like the one Congress passed a few months ago. Today, Ezra Klein points us to a study showing how the recession has been less painful there than in other places. Even though unemployment in Massachusetts has more than doubled, the number of people without insurance didn't go up at all. In other words, people who lost their jobs didn't have to worry that they'd be faced with the anxiety that comes with losing your insurance - not to mention the potential of crushing medical bills - on top of the misfortune they'd already suffered.
There are weaknesses in the Massachusetts system, just as there are weaknesses in the system that will be in place nationally come 2014, when it is phased in. But we will eventually get used to the idea that leaving or losing your job doesn't also mean losing your health coverage. After a while, we'll wonder how we could ever have tolerated a system in which it did.
-- Paul Waldman
