Individual health insurance is not always a good deal in Massachusetts, thanks to state-imposed community rating regulations that require companies to charge the sick and healthy the same rates. The result: Some people elect not to purchase it.

The end result of Massachusetts' "innovative" plan will be a total government takeover of health care. Individual mandates lead to groaning about price. At the same time, the true costs to the state will explode. This will build pressure for price controls. Having already erected a government apparatus to impose price controls, regulation and rationing, the state will again come to the rescue of those it stranded by imposing single-payer health care, or Medicaid, for all.

An innovative approach would deregulate the individual market and allow insurance companies to design policies that are attractive to the non-needy uninsured.

In a blast from the past, Massachusetts law does just the opposite. It protects all existing government mandates and regulations while creating a bureaucracy to distribute new taxpayer subsidized insurance products that have no deductibles. This is the same health plan design threatening General Motors Corp.'s viability and bankrupted its suppliers.

The legislation will not control the true costs of these plans. It will set the premiums on a needs-based sliding scale. But the underlying costs will certainly be much, much higher. The average amount spent on health care in Massachusetts is $6,000 annually. The difference will be funded from taxes.