[N8 v2.0]

..I'm sure the surrounding states to Massachusetts are awaiting the flood of business and people out the state.

Massachusetts becomes first US state with universal health insurance
Wed Apr 5, 4:21 PM ET

Massachusetts is set to become the first state to set up a system of virtually compulsory health insurance in the only major industrial nation not to have universal care.

The northeastern state's Democratic-controlled legislature passed a law on Tuesday night setting out the system. The Republican governor, Mitt Romney, said he will sign the law with only minor modifications.

The legislation requires that all of the state's population of about 6.3 million people have medical insurance by July 1, 2007.

No new taxes are planned but employers with more than 10 staff -- who do not provide health insurance -- will have to make a contribution of about 295 dollars per worker. The plan will cost about 1.2 billion dollars over three years.

Massachusetts residents who are already covered will see their contributions fall slightly while the poor will receive improved coverage and public subsidies to help them pay.

Those who do not have insurance and refuse to subsribe to health insurance will face mounting tax penalties.

Under the plan, some 515,000 people in the state without health insurance will get it within three years. This represents about 95 percent of the uninsured.

"It's another example of how the states are really the laboratories of democracy in our federalist system," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters in Washington.

An explosion in medical costs has made health insurance a major issue in the United States. About 16 percent of gross domestic product now is spent on health care and successive federal governments have been unable to introduce a national insurance system.

Massachusetts could be the first of a series of states to introduce their own coverage plans.

Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, said the new Massachusetts system "is going to be inspiring to other states" particularly after anti-spending Republicans reached a compromise with Democrats.

"They found a way to get to a major expansion of coverage that people could agree on," Ginsburg told The New York Times newspaper. "For a conservative Republican, this is individual responsibility. For a Democrat, this is government helping those that need help."

Hawaii introduced legislation in 1974 demanding that companies give insurance to all staff working at least 20 hours a week. But 10 percent of the population is said to be still without insurance.

Laws laying out plans for universal coverage were introduced by Massachusetts in 1988 and in the states of Minnesota and Vermont in 1992 but these were knocked down during the 1990s.

California also introduced a law which was later cancelled by a referendum.

Maryland has voted a law ordering all companies with more than 10,000 workers must spend at least eight percent of their salary costs on health insurance. Republicans have particularly attacked the law, which notably targets the Wal-Mart supermarket giant.

Kentucky and West Virginia are considering similar laws.

 

[ohio]

Those are the first intelligent words I have ever heard (seen?) out of McLellan's mouth.

 

[$tinkle]

good thing rm has universal 'reach-into-the-grave' coverage of its threads:

National Health Preview
RomneyCare's bad outcomes keep coming.​

The ObamaCare preview that Massachusetts has been conducting for the last several years grows more ominous by the month, not that anyone in Washington is paying attention. So let's check on the Bay State's latest warning, coming soon to a hospital or medical practice near you.

A new survey released yesterday by the Massachusetts Medical Society reveals that fewer than half of the state's primary care practices are accepting new patients, down from 70% in 2007, before former Governor Mitt Romney's health-care plan came online. The average wait time for a routine checkup with an internist is 48 days. It takes 43 days to secure an appointment with a gastroenterologist for chronic heartburn, up from 36 last year, and 41 days to see an OB/GYN, up from 34 last year.

None of this is surprising, though it does dismantle the liberal nostrum that a new entitlement will somehow reduce health spending. When government subsidizes something, you get more of it, which means higher demand for insurance and health-care services. Combined with insurance regulations that suppress innovation and competition, this reality helps explain why Massachusetts premiums are among the highest in the U.S. The current physician shortage was inevitable without new doctors.

Massachusetts health regulators also estimate that emergency room visits jumped 9% between 2004 and 2008, in part due to the lack of routine access to providers. The Romney-Obama theory was that if everyone is insured by the government, costs would fall by squeezing out uncompensated care. Yet emergency medicine accounts for only 2% of all national health spending.

Another notable finding in the Medical Society survey is the provider flight from government health care. Merely 43% of internists and 56% of family physicians accept Commonwealth Care, the heavily subsidized middle-class insurance program. The same respective figures are 53% and 62% for price-controlled Medicaid. Government health insurance may be great, but not if it can't buy actual health care.

The Medical Society also finds "a continued deterioration of the practice environment for physicians in Massachusetts." Perhaps you should book your checkups now, in advance of the national sequel.

 

[dante]

^^^^^Ooooooh, the WSJ Opinion Page. That's almost as unbiased as the NY Post article posted earlier. It omits things like what the wait times are in other states, and whether those have increased as well. MA's health care plan has it's issues, but I'll look to an unbiased source instead of the WSJ to find them.

 

[jonKranked]

giving everyone coverage hasn't fixed the problems that insurance has created; ie it's doing nothing to stop doctors from leaving their practices.

 

[$tinkle]

^^^^^Ooooooh, the WSJ Opinion Page. That's almost as unbiased as the NY Post article posted earlier. It omits things like what the wait times are in other states, and whether those have increased as well. MA's health care plan has it's issues, but I'll look to an unbiased source instead of the WSJ to find them.

hope we're all covered from ailments due to that poised well water you're dishing out

 

[Inclag]

good thing rm has universal 'reach-into-the-grave' coverage of its threads:

National Health Preview
RomneyCare's bad outcomes keep coming.​

I've come to expect better trolling than that from you.

Health care reform spans a wide range of areas, and one of the most important areas to reform is that of emergent care. Emergency room visits are often the only contact many people without insurance have with doctors, because hospitals are mostly required to take emergency cases regardless of the person’s health insurance status. Reducing emergency room visits is a crucial point of reform, but according to a new poll taken by the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) there is little real hope for immediate positive impact.

The poll was conducted in March among physicians nationwide. ACEP sent out a questionnaire via email to 20,687 doctors, and 1,768 of them replied. The subject of the poll was physicians’ opinions about the present a future state of emergency care at their respective hospitals. In excess of 80% of the respondents indicated that the numbers of emergency room visits are already going up, and 95% responded that they believe that this trend of increases will continue next year.

“Despite health care reform, the survey concludes that visits to emergency rooms are going to increase across the country, and that having health insurance doesn’t guarantee access to medical care,” stated Dr. Darria Long, who is an emergency room doctor at the Yale Department of Emergency Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut.

Federal statistics on the usage of emergency rooms state that a record-breaking 124 million visits took place in 2008. 28% of the doctors who responded to the questionnaire attributed these increases to the growing numbers of people without health insurance. Those who don’t have health care coverage frequently rely on emergency room visits for any medical care they need. However, this is not the only driving factor for the increasing emergency room traffic.

“Emergency rooms across the country are seeing many more people now with insurance coverage — it’s not a question alone of not having insurance,” stated Dr. Steven Wolf, who is the Emergency Medicine chairman at the St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Hartford, Connecticut. “What you have now is an aging population who require a lot more emergency care because we are keeping people alive a lot longer and that frequently requires more emergency room visits.”

Dr. Wolf elaborates that, for example, elderly patients who have cardiac defibrillators or have chronic lung problems or diabetes have seen advances in health care and drugs which have extended their life spans significantly in the past 10 years. What this means is that a large number of people have chronic conditions and are prone to crisis. When these people have problems outside of normal physicians’ office hours they will usually go to the emergency room for attention. The aging demographic of the population is driving increasing numbers of visits to emergency rooms which are not influenced by the new health reforms.

Another major contributor to the increasing numbers of emergency visits is that there is a serious shortage of primary care doctors that would normally help keep many cases from becoming so serious they merit an emergency room visit. Insurance companies put a great deal of pressure on these kinds of doctors to see as many patients per day as possible, and this practice has discouraged a lot of medical students from choosing that area of medicine.

“Many primary care family doctors are no longer taking new patients and, with the existing shortage of primary doctors, patients are virtually forced into the emergency room departments,” Dr. Wolf said.

“And I don’t see anything coming along right now that will change this situation,” he continued. “With a shortage of primary care doctors and an increasing gray population, you’re just not going to see the number of emergency room visits going down anytime in the near or mid-term future.”

 

[Secret Squirrel]

Heh...

giving everyone coverage hasn't fixed the problems that insurance has created; ie it's doing nothing to stop doctors from leaving their practices.

How long until the medical tourism industry is ratcheted up to cruise ship level? THOSE slideshows would provide hours of entertainment...

"Here's Babs and I in Bolivia for my appendectomy...notice the complete lack of sanitary facilities. That was a big selling point. And here we are in Kyrgyzstan where nothing costs more than 5 bucks. Our car broke down on the way to the hospital for my hip replacement/angioplasty and some locals fixed the air filter with one of Bab's tampons!! Can you believe that?!??! Here's pictures...."

 

[$tinkle]

I've come to expect better trolling than that from you.

n8 v2.0 proxy troll

keep up

 

[dante]

The average wait time for a routine checkup with an internist is 48 days. It takes 43 days to secure an appointment with a gastroenterologist for chronic heartburn, up from 36 last year, and 41 days to see an OB/GYN, up from 34 last year.

OMG, I was just talking to a friend and she said that she was trying to make an appointment to see an OB/GYN for a physical, and the wait time was the middle of next month!! That's ~40 days from now, except we live in a capitalistic free-market state with no guarantee of health care. Maybe wait times at *all* physicians offices are going up?

Nah, the WSJ Opinion page would never spin half-truths and cherry-pick information to prove a point, would they?

 

[$tinkle]

Nah, the WSJ Opinion page would never spin half-truths and cherry-pick information to prove a point, would they?

so you concede their point is proven then?

just checking....


ed: anecdotal evidence is ok now? again, just checking

 

[dante]

so you concede their point is proven then?

just checking....


ed: anecdotal evidence is ok now? again, just checking

I was pointing out that they're cherry-picking data if they give wait times in MA and not anywhere else, like WI, which, OMFG has similar wait times. "Opinion" pieces are just that, their "opinion". They always cherry-pick data to prove their own point, as opposed to just reporting on news. It's why posting opinion pieces as facts will always get you ridiculed, including here.

 

[$tinkle]

I was pointing out that they're cherry-picking data if they give wait times in MA and not anywhere else, like WI, which, OMFG has similar wait times. "Opinion" pieces are just that, their "opinion". They always cherry-pick data to prove their own point, as opposed to just reporting on news. It's why posting opinion pieces as facts will always get you ridiculed, including here.

ok, so what's your opinion of romneycare, and if this is/should be a prelude to obamacare?

and if i understand your posts, you would seem to suggest romneycare makes not one wit of difference from other states, and could therefore be interpreted as just another way to skin a cat. is that true?

 

[dante]

ok, so what's your opinion of romneycare, and if this is/should be a prelude to obamacare?

and if i understand your posts, you would seem to suggest romneycare makes not one wit of difference from other states, and could therefore be interpreted as just another way to skin a cat. is that true?

I didn't say *any* of that. I was just pointing out that your source sucked. I think Romneycare isn't much better than what we have now, and that if we *really* wanted to improve our health care distribution and reduce costs, we should objectively look at other models around the world. Any time when you add in 20% for profit, advertising, CEO salaries, etc you're going to end up spending more money. We have *zero* incentive to stay healthy, we're bombarded with billions of dollars in advertising trying to get us to think that we have some illness or disease, and someone who's on death's door pays the same amount for insurance (through their employer) as a younger healthier person. It's why we spend almost 2x what other countries do on health care costs and are somewhere around 30th in the world in life expectancy.

Romneycare/Obamacare fix almost none of those issues, and about the only thing going for it is taxpayer subsidies so poor people can buy health care. It's good for allowing the poor to buy health care, but beyond that it pretty much sucks.

 

[$tinkle]

I didn't say *any* of that. I was just pointing out that your source sucked. I think Romneycare isn't much better than what we have now, and that if we *really* wanted to improve our health care distribution and reduce costs, we should objectively look at other models around the world. Any time when you add in 20% for profit, advertising, CEO salaries, etc you're going to end up spending more money. We have *zero* incentive to stay healthy, we're bombarded with billions of dollars in advertising trying to get us to think that we have some illness or disease, and someone who's on death's door pays the same amount for insurance (through their employer) as a younger healthier person. It's why we spend almost 2x what other countries do on health care costs and are somewhere around 30th in the world in life expectancy.

i'm not so sure we should put much credence in other countries' soln's, as we appear to be unique in our burden from the enormity of fatasses, fixed income types who use the ER as primary care, and a disproportionately large number of illegal immigrants who take from teh system, while putting little to nothing in.

we could use a good reset, taking the form of either significant overhaul to every aspect of the industry (private & publc), or instantaneously an systematically reduce our population by a third. i'm feeling a little fluffy these days, so i won't openly advocate for #2

 

[Secret Squirrel]

i'm not so sure we should put much credence in other countries' soln's, as we appear to be unique in our burden from the enormity of fatasses, fixed income types who use the ER as primary care, and a disproportionately large number of illegal immigrants who take from teh system, while putting little to nothing in.

we could use a good reset, taking the form of either significant overhaul to every aspect of the industry (private & publc), or instantaneously an systematically reduce our population by a third. i'm feeling a little fluffy these days, so i won't openly advocate for #2

$tinkle's custom title: expert on blowing
California porn clinic closing....

Coincidence??
I think not!


On topic: 300 million people having the sensibility that what they do a/effects others???? I can't even go 2 days without overhearing someone mention that they are really working out hard / dieting but not losing weight. What's in their hand you ask? Some 3 patty monstrosity from Mc-Burger-Dys-Onic-Jr.

 

[$tinkle]

Romney: As first act, out with ObamaCare

in 5 easy steps!

 

[$tinkle]

no wonder he's a mormon:

Romney defends Massachusetts health-care law and takes pains to differentiate it from Obamacare

 

[Jim Mac]

Thanks to Mitt for explaining why universal health care will work!

Both the Massachusetts law and the new federal law require individuals to purchase health insurance, a feature that is anathema to conservative philosophy. But Romney maintained there’s a key difference between his state’s reform and “ObamaCare”: The mandate in Massachusetts was aimed at preventing “free riders” from receiving health care without paying for it, while the federal mandate is an abuse of power, he said. By law, a hospital may not turn away a patient seeking emergency care.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20110512/ts_csm/383678

 

[berkshire_rider]

"Universal" health care in Massachusetts is a fvcking joke. It has done nothing to fix things and has made the situation worse. Hospitals are writing off millions for people who can't/won't pay and the only reason this "system" is still in place is because it's being subsidized by the federal government.

There's more "free riders" using the system now then there ever was.......