Monday, January 18, 2010

Massachusetts Health Care System Total Disaster

Is the conclusion here any different than what we all know to be the conclusion of the coming "ObamaCare" bill now be hashed out behind closed doors?

Everyone knows this is a disaster - what other reason could there be given that they, the liberal progressives Marxists, have to hide what they are cooking up to ram down our throats? Yet and still a significant number of the population thinks we are going in the right direction. Of course, maybe that number is misleading as well. The polls can say anything they want given the right questions to answer.

HOPE AND DELUSION IN HEALTH CARE
Source: Rick Scott, "Hope and delusion in health care; Democrats imagine political victory in popular disgust," Washington Times, January 14, 2010.

Poll after poll shows a majority of Americans oppose the current health care bill, and Democrats don't seem to care, taking refuge by saying the opposite -- that poll after poll shows Americans want health care reform. The problem, of course, is that Americans don't want the health care reform Democrats are insisting on passing. What they do want is lower costs, more choice and higher quality care. Things the Democrats effort won't do, says Rick Scott, chairman of Conservatives for Patients' Rights and a health care entrepreneur who started a chain of urgent care centers in Florida.

Similar policies to the Senate bill were passed in Massachusetts in 2006:

Residents of that state now pay the highest insurance premiums in the nation.
Exploding health care costs mean the state can't even pay hospitals enough to cover the care given to patients.

Waiting lists are growing, particularly in Boston, where some patients have to wait up to a year for routine visits to specialists.

All of these "reforms" in Massachusetts were passed just to extend health coverage to a tiny fraction of the state population, but even former supporters are admitting that the exploding costs of Massachusetts' health care reform is a serious concern:

According to the most recent Rasmussen poll, about 36 percent of the state's residents view reform as a failure, compared with just 31 percent who don't.
Another 31 percent say their health care costs have gone up, versus just 20 percent who say the opposite.

Every aspect of Massachusetts' reform has been an unmitigated disaster for families in that state, says Scott. The Senate health "reform" bill passed on Christmas Eve is very similar to the reform laws in Massachusetts, where an average family of four pays more than $13,000 in premiums -- the highest in the nation, and an increase of 40 percent since 2003, higher than the national average, says Scott.

Now all the talk out of Massachusetts is about government-imposed "cost controls." That means major cutbacks in services and payments to providers, which in turn means rationing, longer waits for care and denial of certain medications -- all of the lowlights of universal health care nightmares manifested in places such as Britain and Canada, says Scott.

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