Massachusetts has now set the minimum level of insurance required to comply with the state’s individual mandate. Not only will every resident of the state be required to have insurance by July of this year, but by January of 2009, no one in the state will be allowed to have insurance with more than a $2,000 deductible or total out of pocket costs of more than $5,000. In addition, every policy in the state will be required to cover prescription drugs, a move that could add 5–15 percent to the cost of insurance plans.

In my paper on then-Governor Romney’s plan, I warned that the state’s new managed competition bureaucracy, the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, would operate as a regulatory body, setting up just such a slippery slope to government control of health care. The more we see from Massachusetts, the more it looks like I was right.