Massachusetts is a rich state, and it has America’s highest number of primary-care doctors per capita.
So if any state could handle lots of new patients, it should surely be Massachusetts.
But it hasn’t worked out that way.
In 2006, before ObamaCare socialized medicine was ever proposed, Massachusetts started its own medical reform — on which ObamaCare would later be modeled. The state pumped money into health care so it could reduce the percentage of its residents who lacked coverage.
Now, if that were all there was to it, you might think Massachusetts’ program was a “success.” After all, lots of residents who had not had easy medical care before suddenly had it. But the goal was to ensure everyone could get timely, efficient health care at a reasonable cost. And by that measure, Massachusetts’ model has failed catastrophically.
Costs skyrocketed — and so did waiting times to see a doctor. For example, it now takes an average of 63 days — more than two months! — for a new patient in Boston to get an appointment with a primary-care physician. That is the longest wait in any of 15 cities nationwide where wait times were studied. By contrast, it takes only a week for a new patient to see a primary-care doctor in Miami. Wait times to see specialists in Boston are also far higher than in other cities, according to the research company that surveyed doctors’ offices in the 15 cities.
Worse still, 56 percent of internists and 40 percent of primary-care physicians in Massachusetts are no longer accepting new patients at all, according to the Massachusetts Medical Society.
So where do you think the sick in Boston wind up when they are told they have to wait more than two months for a doctor’s appointment — if they even can get one? Some surely end up in hospital emergency rooms.
And remember: Massachusetts has the highest percentage of doctors in America. If it was woefully incapable of handling the influx of newly covered patients under its “miniature” version of ObamaCare, what is going to happen to patients in states that have far more patients for every available doctor? Won’t many people wind up getting extremely costly, inefficient care in emergency rooms — the very thing that health “reform” was supposed to prevent?
The “Massachusetts model” has given us a terrible warning about socialized medicine. It is sad that our nation as a whole will have to suffer through some of the same consequences because our Democrat-controlled Congress recently narrowly passed ObamaCare.