This is the Kidder Daily Podcast for Tuesday, June 9, 2009. I'm Kila Brown.

The future of U.S. health care reform may look a lot like the reform in Massachusetts

of just a few years ago.

What lessons can be drawn from the Massachusetts experience?

Mike Tanner, Cato Senior Fellow, and author of a new paper on the Massachusetts model, tells us.

Well, it looks like the bills that are likely to emerge from Congress are going to contain

many of the key elements that the Massachusetts

reforms had.

That is a mandate on both individuals and businesses, some form of what they're calling an

exchange or connector.

It's an artificial mechanism to regulate the small group

and individual marketplaces.

Subsidies, certainly well into the middle class.

And these have not worked very well in Massachusetts.

Even by the proponents' own goals of universal coverage and lowering costs.

These proposals have largely failed in Massachusetts.

That's not something to recommend them as a national model for reform.

Obama himself during the campaign was opposed to

individual mandates and he has now singled a willingness to have that be part of the

mix. What is that? What is an individual mandate? An individual mandate is a

requirement that everyone must purchase health insurance. If they don't get it

through work or through a government program they have to go out and purchase it on their own.

...