Best Insurance Plan is to Stay Healthy
According to an annual survey called the "Update on Health Reform in Massachusetts," about 70% of Massachusetts residents still like the state's almost-kinda-sorta universal health care system.
That's the good news. Here's some of the bad:
[A]n increasing percentage of residents are now reporting problems paying medical bills. It also found that a rising number of residents, especially those with lower incomes, are reporting that they did not get needed care because of costs, which are rising faster than inflation.
Health care reform that doesn't control costs isn't much of a reform. And "reform" that maintains the inefficient and expensive system of multiple for-profit payers isn't reform at all.
Last year, almost 18% of Massachusetts residents reported having problems paying bills, in spite of our "near-universal" health care law.
And this may be most disturbing of all:
Difficulties finding a physician were much more common for low-income than higher-income residents. And adults with state-subsidized health insurance were much more likely to be told that a physician was not taking their type of insurance - 24 percent - compared with those with private insurance, 7 percent.
One out of four low-income residents with subsidized insurance have trouble finding a doctor who'll take them as patients? I don't call that reform at all.
Percentage-wise, more Massachusetts residents are insured than those in any other state. But it's starting to sound to me like many of them are insured in name only. This is not the kind of system the US should adopt. But the Obama plan, with its insistence on maintaining private insurers, sounds alarming like it.
Comments
Abi, Cartledge asked me to tell you that he finds he is blocked at your blog. Can you email him or leave a message on his blog?
ps, if the universal health care we end up with is MA style, it might be worse than no health care at all. in fact, it may actually be no health care at all if doctors are allowed to refuse to see state-covered patients!
Posted by: D.K. Raed | May 31, 2009 12:22 AM
Abi, Cartledge asked me to tell you that he finds he is blocked at your blog. Can you email him or leave a message on his blog?
ps, if the universal health care we end up with is MA style, it might be worse than no health care at all. in fact, it may actually be no health care at all if doctors are allowed to refuse to see state-covered patients!
Posted by: D.K. Raed | May 31, 2009 12:23 AM
Thanks DK. Hmmm, don't know what happened with Cart. I surely didn't block him out. I'll check it out.
The Mass. plan seems nothing more than a way to say we have universal coverage (it's now officially called "near-universal" health care). It maintains the top-heavy, redundant, for-profit system of private insurers, so costs are not being controlled. It's definitely the wrong road to go down.
Posted by: abi | May 31, 2009 08:01 AM