Boston Globe Likes Mass. Plan, but Reports Patients Waiting 100 Days to See Doctor

Reading the Boston Globe two days in a row can be educational.

A September 21 Globe editorial attacked Republican Sen. John McCain on health care but had kind words for Democratic Sen. Barack Obama’s health plan, likening it to the Massachusetts plan.

“Obama's plan is like the new Massachusetts universal coverage law with one exception: There is no mandate on individuals to get insurance or pay a penalty. Just as this state did, he would expand government subsidies and programs for the uninsured. His proposed National Health Insurance Exchange looks like Commonwealth Choice, this state's lineup of heavily regulated private insurance plans for people without work-based insurance. In Massachusetts, 94.6 percent of residents now have insurance. Without the mandate, Obama's plan would never come as close to universal coverage, but it would expand coverage.”

It concluded: “The Massachusetts experiment will test whether better access to healthcare does pay off in improved prevention and lower costs.”

Yet in the same paper the next day, the early effects were documented.

“The wait to see primary care doctors in Massachusetts has grown to as long as 100 days, while the number of practices accepting new patients has dipped in the past four years, with care the scarcest in some rural areas,” reported the Globe’s Liz Kowalczyk September 22.

Though the Globe’s editorialist wanted to see the effects of Massachusetts’ mandate on prevention and costs, unfortunately, the reality shows an insurance mandate isn’t solving the state’s problems.

On the contrary – the statewide insurance mandate has only intensified existing problems, like the shortage of primary care doctors. And such shortages exist across the country. As the Globe reported, “According to a survey published this month in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 2 percent of students graduating from medical school plan to practice primary care.” Nursing is also plagued by continual shortages, as Stateline.org reported September 22.

The health sector has real problems, and the unfortunate lesson from Massachusetts is that mandating insurance coverage isn’t the way to solve them.