Re: MA Doctors - Only Private Insurers Profit, Healthcare plan is a failure
- From: "rmrb" <no@no>
- Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2008 03:43:48 -0500
I lived in CA for many a year, then moved back to MA, but kept Blue Cross of
CA instead of changing to MA Blue Cross, and i bet i saved my ass plenty of
money. MA is corrupt as it gets/
"k sturm" <kasturm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:blQij.3848$jJ5.3345@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Well, duh. I coulda told them that before they mandated that everyone buy
health insurance. Both Hillary and Obama's healthcare proposals are the
same damned thing, too. Massachusetts doctors agree with me - we need
universal healthcare, those other plans help nobody but the insurers who
profit by denying care to their policyholders.
Posted on January 14, 2008
Doctors Give Massachusetts Health Reform a Failing Grade - Poor Early
Outcomes Raise Red Flags, Only Private Insurers Profit
For Immediate Release
Contacts:
Dr. Rachel Nardin, 617.667.4382
Dr. David Himmelstein, 617.665.1032
Todd Main, 312.782.6006
Over 250 Massachusetts doctors have signed an open letter to the country
warning that the health reform model enacted by Massachusetts is failing
and that a single payer program is the only alternative.
"It is urgent that the rest of the country know that Massachusetts is a
living laboratory for the health care reforms being pushed in California
and by the Obama/Clinton/Edwards campaigns. Right now the Gov.
Romney/Massachusetts' plan gets a failing grade on the ground," said
Dr.Rachel Nardin, Assistant Professor of neurology at Harvard Medical
School.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An Open Letter to the Nation from Massachusetts Physicians:
Early Outcomes from Massachusetts' Health Care Reform
We write to alert colleagues and the nation to the disturbing early
outcomes of Massachusetts' widely-heralded approach to health care reform.
Although we wish that the current reform could secure health insurance for
all, its failings reinforce our conviction that only a single payer
program can assure patients the care they need.
In 2006, our state enacted a law designed to extend health coverage to
virtually all state residents. Political leaders in other states as well
as several Democratic presidential candidates have embraced this model.
Massachusetts' law mandates that uninsured individuals must purchase
private insurance or pay a fine. The law established a new state agency to
ensure that affordable plans were available; offered low income residents
subsidies to help them buy coverage; and expanded Medicaid coverage for
the very poor. (Immigrants are mostly excluded from these subsidized
programs.) Moneys that previously funded free care for the uninsured were
shifted to the new insurance program, along with revenues from new fines
on employers who fail to offer health benefits to their workers. In
addition, the federal government provided extra funds for the program's
first two years.
Starting January 1, 2008 Massachusetts residents face fines if they cannot
offer proof of insurance. Yet as of December 1, 2007 only 37% of the
657,000 uninsured had gained coverage under the new program. These
individuals often feel well served by the reform in that they now have
health insurance. However, 79% of these newly insured individuals are very
poor people enrolled in Medicaid or similar free plans. Virtually all of
them were previously eligible for completely free care funded by the
state, but face co-payments under the new plan. In effect, public funds
for care of the poor that previously flowed directly to hospitals and
clinics now flow through insurers with their higher administrative costs.
Among the near poor uninsured (who are eligible for partial premium
subsidies) only 16% had enrolled in the new coverage. And barely 7% of the
uninsured individuals with incomes too high to qualify for subsidies had
enrolled according to the official state figures. Few can afford premiums
for even the skimpiest coverage; the lowest cost plan offered for a couple
in their fifties costs $8,200 annually, and carries a $2,000 per person
deductible.
Moreover, the state's cost for subsidies is running $147 million over the
$472 million budgeted for fiscal year 2007. Meanwhile, collections from
fines on employers who fail to provide coverage are 80% below the original
projections. The funding gap will widen in future years as health care
costs escalate and insurers raise premiums. Already, state officials speak
of making up the shortfall by forcing patients to pay sharply higher
co-pays and deductibles, and by slashing funds promised to safety net
hospitals.
While patients, the state and safety net providers struggle, private
insurers have prospered under the new law, and the costs of bureaucracy
have risen. Blue Cross, the state's largest insurer, is reaping a surplus
of more than $1 million each day, and awarded its chairman a $16.4 million
retirement bonus even as he continues to draw a $3 million salary. All of
the major insurers in our state continue to charge overhead costs five
times higher than Medicare and eleven-fold higher than Canada's single
payer system. Moreover, the new state agency that brokers private coverage
adds its own surcharge of 4.5% to each policy it sells.
A single payer program could save Massachusetts more than $9 billion
annually on health care bureaucracy, making universal coverage affordable.
But because the 2006 law deepened our dependence on private insurance, it
can only add coverage by adding costs. Though politically feasible, this
approach is already proving fiscally unsustainable. The next economic
downturn will push up the number of uninsured just as the tax revenues
needed to fund subsidies fall.
The lesson from Massachusetts is that we still need real health care
reform: single payer, non-profit national health insurance.
--
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do
nothing."
- Edmund Burke
.
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