Look into the crystal ball to see the future

Mass. healthcare reform is failing us

MASSACHUSETTS HAS been lauded for its healthcare reform, but the program is a failure. Created solely to achieve universal insurance coverage, the plan does not even begin to address the other essential components of a successful healthcare system.

What would such a system provide? The prestigious Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, has defined five criteria for healthcare reform. Coverage should be: universal, not tied to a job, affordable for individuals and families, affordable for society, and it should provide access to high-quality care for everyone. The state's plan flunks on all counts. First, it has not achieved universal healthcare, although the reform has been a boon to the private insurance industry. The state has more than 200,000 without coverage, and the count can only go up with rising unemployment.

The article covers many instances where people had to give up treatment due to lack of affordability and then goes on to tout that we need to go off of the Medicaid model and improve and expand it. I call B.S. If we do what is suggested in this article all of the good medical practitioners will be gone. They will not be able to afford to keep their doors open, and what they are allowed to do by Medicaid rules is so limiting that it is not health care. The rules basically have a criteria that requires you to follow it and if your patient is outside the norms no additional tests can be run because there is nothing to qualify them. It is very inhuman. It is like asking an accountant to run the purchases for a kitchen. They will buy the cheapest items available, but they most likely will not do the job well or for long.