Massachusetts Health Care: A Model Not to Copy

The Obama-Kennedy health plan is modeled after the Massachusetts plan, which, when adopted, many applauded as innovative and destined for success. In fact, the Massachusetts plan has been a massive failure and is a model for what not to do.

It has increased costs. It has wasted taxpayer dollars. It has limited patients' choice. It has hurt small business. It has failed to achieve its goal of universal coverage. Most objectionable, it has created shortages and waiting lists.

Promoters predicted that the Massachusetts plan would lower health-care costs, but -- so far -- costs are moving in the opposite direction. State government spending on health-care programs in Massachusetts has increased by 42 percent since the plan was adopted in 2006 and currently is 33 percent above the national average.

Advocates promised that the Massachusetts plan would make health insurance more affordable, but according to a Cato study, insurance premiums have been increasing at nearly double the national average: 7.4 percent in 2007, 8 percent to 12 percent in 2008, and an expected 9 percent increase this year. Health insurance in Massachusetts costs an average of $16,897 for a family of four, compared to a national average of $12,700.

The Massachusetts plan incorporates a system of middle-class subsidies called Commonwealth Care to help pay for insurance for families with incomes up to 300 percent of poverty level ($66,150 for a family of four) and also expanded eligibility for Medicaid.

The Massachusetts Connector, a new bureaucracy that was supposed to increase patient choice, has become an overbearing regulatory arm of government that has decreased competition by prescribing benefits insurance must offer. The Connector is evidently unpopular with patients, since only 18,000 people have used the Connector to buy insurance during the past three years.

The Connector has imposed regulations that add to the cost of insurance and limit consumer choice, such as requiring prescription-drug coverage and preventive-care services, restricting high-deductible policies and putting limits on annual or per-sickness policies. Complying with the Connector's rules means changing from your current insurance that you like.

The costs to the taxpayers are rising, too, and one tax increase has not satisfied the appetite of the hungry plan. The prospect of huge deficits has elicited discussion of cuts in reimbursements to providers and the imposition of a "global budget," which is a euphemism for rationing.

Even though Massachusetts has more doctors per capita than any other state, the Boston Globe reports that waiting periods to see physicians have grown. The average wait is now 63 days to see a family doctor, 50 days to see a specialist and the second trimester of pregnancy to see an obstetrician-gynecologist.

If you want to see the busiest, most popular physicians, the wait can be up to a year. The longer waits are the result of thousands of newly insured residents coming into the health-care system.

Massachusetts has reduced the number of uninsured, but there are no reliable figures on how many are still uninsured since some statistics are based on telephone surveys that don't reach significant groups of people who lack landline telephones (such as young people and illegal aliens). Cato estimates that 200,000 are still uninsured.

If the number of uninsured had been measurably reduced, that should be reflected in the use of hospitals' emergency care facilities for uncompensated care. But hospitals don't confirm this effect.

Small business is hurting, too. The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council ranks Massachusetts last of all the 50 states for business-friendly health-care policies.

A June 21 front-page article in The New York Times reported that one cancer unit in a Philadelphia Veterans Administration hospital bungled 92 of 116 prostate cancer treatments over six years (requiring these patients to undergo a second operation) before the errors were discovered. The real problem is that the government cannot run health care safely (or cheaper).

Canada is another model of what not to do. It's fortunate that Canada is so close to the United States because Canadians rely on American medicine for serious surgery.

De facto rationing in Canada is practiced by waiting lists rather than by using its realistic name. The Globe and Mail in Toronto reports that the physician shortage is so acute that some towns hold lotteries to win a ticket granting access to the local doctor and that Ontario sent 160 patients to New York and Michigan for emergency neurosurgery between 2006 and 2008.

Although President Obama told the American Medical Association that single-payer (government-controlled) health care works "pretty well" in some other countries, no government has ever been able to run a health-care system as well as private enterprise. Less regulation of health care, not more government control, is the way to healthier Americans and lower costs.

Health insurance in Massachusetts costs an average of $16,897 for a family of four, compared to a national average of $12,700.
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Unbelievable. The difference in price is what an average family can actually afford. $1400 a MONTH. That’s a mortgage, or for a small home a mortgage and a car payment. Big rip off. Time to opt out and self-insure if you are a saver.

Well NOW I completely understand why the obamessiah wishes to emulate the Massachusetts model with his national health care plan. It dovetails PERFECTLY his overall plan for our country.

"National Health Preview - The Massachusetts debacle, coming soon to your neighborhood."
"Three years ago, the former Massachusetts Governor had the inadvertent good sense to create the "universal" health-care program that the White House and Congress now want to inflict on the entire country.
It is proving to be instructive, as Mr. Romney's foresight previews what President Obama, Max Baucus, Ted Kennedy and Pete Stark are cooking up for everyone else.
In Massachusetts's latest crisis, Governor Deval Patrick and his Democratic colleagues are starting to move down the path that government health plans always follow when spending collides with reality -- i.e., price controls.
As costs continue to rise, the inevitable results are coverage restrictions and waiting periods. It was only a matter of time.

They're trying to manage the huge costs of the subsidized middle-class insurance program that is gradually swallowing the state budget.
The program provides low- or no-cost coverage to about 165,000 residents, or three-fifths of the newly insured, and is budgeted at $880 million for 2010, a 7.3% single-year increase that is likely to be optimistic.
The state's overall costs on health programs have increased by 42% (!) since 2006.

What really whipped along RomneyCare were claims that health care would be less expensive if everyone were covered.
But reducing costs while increasing access are irreconcilable issues.
Mr. Romney should have known better before signing on to this not-so-grand experiment, especially since the state's "free market" reforms that he boasts about have proven to be irrelevant when not fictional.
Only 21,000 people have used the "connector" that was supposed to link individuals to private insurers."

A Very Sick Health Plan; Bay State’s ‘Grand Experiment’ Fails [RomneyCare]
"The Daily News Record, Harrisonburg, Va. - 2009-03-31 "
"For folks increasingly leery of President Obama’s plan to radically overhaul America’s health-care system,
or 17 percent of the nation’s economy, all this could hardly have come at a better time —
that is, fiscal troubles aplenty within Repubican Mitt Romney’s brainchild, Massachusetts’ “grand experiment” in “universal” health care."

"Initiated on Mr. Romney’s gubernatorial watch in 2006, this “experiment” has fallen on hard times, and predictably so.
Even though the Bay State commenced its program with a far smaller percentage of uninsured residents than exists nationwide,
“RomneyCare” is threatening to bankrupt the state. Budgeted for Fiscal Year 2010 at $880 million,
or 7.3 percent more than a year ago, this plan, aimed at providing low- or no-cost health coverage to roughly 165,000 residents,
has caused Massachusetts’ overall expenditures on all health-related programs to jump an astounding 42 percent since 2006.

So what does Mr. Romney’s successor, Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick, propose as a remedy for these skyrocketing costs?
Well, whaddya think? The standard litany of prescriptions (no pun intended) — price controls and spending caps, for a start, and then, again predictably, waiting periods and limitations on coverage.
As in Europe and Canada, so too in Massachusetts. And, we feel certain, everyone from Mr. Romney to Mr. Patrick said, “It would never happen here.”
But then, such things are inevitable when best-laid plans, with all their monstrous costs, run smack-dab into fiscal reality.

"Hospital patients 'left in agony'"
"Patients were allegedly left screaming in pain and drinking from flower vases on a nightmare hospital ward.
Between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust over three years, a damning Healthcare Commission report said.
The watchdog's investigation found inadequately trained staff who were too few in number, junior doctors left alone in charge at night and patients left without food, drink or medication as their operations were repeatedly cancelled.
Patients were left in pain or forced to sit in soiled bedding for hours at a time and were not given their regular medication, the Commission heard.
Receptionists with no medical training were expected to assess patients coming in to A&E, some of whom needed urgent care.
Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS, said there had been a "gross and terrible breach" of patients' trust and a "complete failure of leadership".
The Healthcare Commission's chairman Sir Ian Kennedy said the investigation followed concerns about a higher than normal death rate at the Trust, which senior managers could not explain.
He said: "The resulting report is a shocking story. Our report tells a story of appalling standards of care and chaotic systems for looking after patients. These are words I have not previously used in any report.
"There were inadequacies in almost every stage of caring for patients. There was no doubt that patients will have suffered and some of them will have died as a result."
Julie Bailey, 47, was so concerned about the care being given to her 86-year-old mother Bella at Stafford Hospital that she and her relatives slept in a chair at her bedside for eight weeks.
She said: "We saw patients drinking out of..."

Thousands of patients with terminal cancer were dealt a blow last night after a decision was made to deny them life prolonging drugs.
The Government's rationing body said two drugs for advanced breast cancer and a rare form of stomach cancer were too expensive for the NHS.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is expected to confirm guidance in the next few weeks that will effectively ban their use.
The move comes despite a pledge by Nice to be more flexible in giving life-extending drugs
to terminally-ill cancer patients after a public outcry last year over 'death sentence' decisions."

"Patients Forced To Wait Hours In Ambulances Parked Outside A&E Departments
"An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has found that thousands of 999 patients are being left to wait in ambulances in car parks and holding bays, or in hospital corridors – in some cases for more than five hours – before they can even join the queue for urgent treatment.

Experts warn that hospitals are deliberately delaying when they accept patients – or are diverting them to different sites –
in order to meet Government targets to treat people within fours hours of admitting them."

"Access-to-care problems are resurfacing in Mass.
AMA News - Massachusetts' Commonwealth Connector health reforms have reduced the state's uninsured population to less than 3% of residents, the lowest among all states.
But a recent survey found an uptick last fall in adults reporting difficulty accessing certain types of care."

"Massachusetts: 26% Consider State’s Health Care Reform a Success (37% a failure)
Rasmussen Reports June 29, 2009
Twenty-six percent (26%) of Massachusetts voters say their state’s health care reform effort has been a success.
A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state finds that 37% say the reform effort has been a failure, while another 37% are not sure.
Only 10% of Bay State voters say the quality of health care has gotten better as a result of the reform plan while 29% say it has gotten worse.
Most (53%) say the quality of care has not changed. The Massachusetts Health Care Reform was enacted in 2006 by Republican Governor Mitt Romney and a Democratic state legislature. "

No, it’s because of ‘republicans’ like Romney that we have the problems we have. They have sold us out, repeatedly, over the past couple decades. They diluted the republican brand, they sold out ‘right versus wrong’, they sold out the basic principles of the party, and now everything has gone to hell. So don’t blame the many who despise Romney and some of the others. There are very sound reasons to do so.

Calm down.....

..I am not a "Mitt Romney hater"...and I resent that you would fly off the handle and call me one when I only asked a question.

It is not my fault that we now have an arrogant mealy-mouthed lying pos in the People’s House....I DIDN'T DO IT!

I merely asked a question...."wasn't this a Mitt Romney deal"?...I did not know for sure.

Maybe Romney thought at the time that it was an honorable thing for him to do, who knows?...but if he did, we all make mistakes...and I am also sure that he had not just a little pressure applied from the Mass legislature....and as for mistakes, just look at what has happened to all of us lately what with the election of the arrogant mealy-mouthed lying pos in the People’s House and all the misery and strife that this brings to us all, literally by the hour.

I am sure that Romney is not all that proud of the plan now and if God smiles on America again, and Romney happens to be elected POTUS, he will keep us all away from "plans" like the Mass health plan...or any other kind of gov mandated health plan....

Go in peace, I am not your enemy....Obama is.

But it was his plan...

So exactly what is the point of you post then? I think that an honest question given you response here.

And blaming conservatives for not supporting a non-conservative, one who would (and did) create a plan like the one you post as an example of what NOT to do as conservatives to solve the health care issue is a text book non sequitir. It is also a ploy that has been used a lot by his supporters here, (you guys voted for Obama etc. etc. etc.) as if by some magic all things would have been alright if he had won or that he could have one given his performance overall.

Ironic that you say that almost in the same breath you also post what a nightmare the Mass system is, a system he created, one he would have shared with the rest of the nation. So would the same program be acceptable to you if Mitt had won?

You can't support Romney and at the same time “dis” his biggest so called accomplishment, the very thing that separates him the most from the ideals of this site...

Opposing such is not "hate" it is just supporting ones political concerns.

“I am sure that Romney is not all that proud of the plan now.........”

He has stated this plan was good for Massachusetts (due to a huge illegal immigration population which threatened to close hospitals in Massachusetts) but might not be a good plan for other states - he clearly stated in his presidential run that each state should come up with their own solutions.

I knew it wouldn’t take long for the Mitt Romney haters to come out of the wood work.

HAAATE! HAAAATE!

The Romneybot version of the race card - deflect valid criticism by calling it HAAATE.

It is because of people like you that we have that arrogant mealy-mouthed lying pos in the People’s House

No, it's the fault of many in the GOP for wanting RINOs like McCain and Romney.

“But I wonder, what does he think of the plan right now, when the effects are becoming clearer?”

I’m not sure but when I as a Massachusetts resident hear Romney this, Romney that...........I merely ask folks to consider that 12 out of 12 members of the Massachusetts Congressional Delegation are Democrats, all of it’s Constitutional offices are filled by Dem office holders, the State Senate is made up of 35 Dems vs 5 Republicans, the State House has 145 Dems vs 14 Republicans.

It was slightly differant when Romney was governor, he & the Lt Gov were Republicans and they may have had another dozen seats that were Republican. The most popular newspaper is the Globe and even the local FOX station is pretty liberal.

“Socialized” medicine was coming to Mass whether Romney was governor or not. Again look at the numbers of Dems, then consider all the top medical schools & hospitals that make up much of Boston’s economy.

I honestly don’t know if his team authored the bill, ammended it, or if he merely signed the bill as presented.
Not sure how he feels about it today. I do know he said the plan was not meant for all states.

My personal view is that there’s nothing inconsitant with a person supporting a statewide medical plan & opposing a nationwide medical plan.

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