Massachusetts doctors snub state’s health reform as model for country, pick single-payer system inst

[eridani]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 22, 2010

Contact:
Rachel Nardin, M.D., chair of neurology, Cambridge Hospital; president, Massachusetts Physicians for a National Health Program

Patricia Downs Berger, M.D., retired internist; co-chair, Mass-Care: The Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care

Benjamin Day, executive director, Mass-Care: The Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care

Massachusetts doctors snub state’s health reform as model for country, pick single-payer system instead

BOSTON – For the first time the Massachusetts Medical Society has asked doctors what they think about health reform in its annual “Physician Workforce Survey” of 1,000 practicing physicians in the state, and the results may strike some as surprising.

A plurality of the physician respondents, 34 percent, picked single-payer health reform as their preferred model of reform, followed by 32 percent who favored a private-public insurance mix with a public option buy-in. Seventeen percent voted for the pre-reform status quo, including the permissibility of insurers offering low-premium, high-deductible health plans.

Remarkably, only 14 percent of Massachusetts doctors would recommend their own state’s model as a model for the nation. A small number of respondents, 3 percent, chose an unspecified “other.”

In other words, the doctors with the most on-the-ground experience with the Massachusetts plan, after which the Obama administration’s new health law is patterned, regard it as one of the least desirable alternatives for financing care.

The findings contrast with an earlier survey of Massachusetts physicians’ opinions on health reform funded by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. That survey, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in October 2009, found that three-fourths of doctors in the state support the Massachusetts reform law. However, the survey did not allow respondents to express their preference for alternative models of health reform.

Dr. Rachel Nardin, chair of neurology at Cambridge Hospital and president of the Massachusetts chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program, said: "Massachusetts physicians realize that the state's health reform has failed to make health care affordable and accessible, and won't work for the nation. These findings show the high support for single-payer Medicare for all by physicians on the front lines of reform."

While many in the country look to Massachusetts as a role model for the country, Dr. Patricia Downs Berger, co-chair of Mass-Care, the single-payer advocacy coalition in Massachusetts, and a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society, notes, “Physicians in Massachusetts, particularly after health reform, know from experience that the current health care system is not sustainable and is not addressing the deep inequalities and high costs faced by patients, and they are calling for a more fundamental change.”

A survey published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in April 2008 showed that 59 percent of U.S. physicians support government action to establish national health insurance, an increase of 10 percentage points over similar findings five years before.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Link to the 2010 Physician Workforce Survey (relevant pages: 86-90):
http://www.massmed.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Research_Reports_and_Studies2&TEMPLATE=/CM/HTMLDisplay.cfm&ContentID=36167

Link to 2009 Blue Cross Blue Shield survey of Massachusetts physicians:
http://healthpolicyandreform.nejm.org/?p=2133&query=home

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2009-releases/three-fourths-of-mass-physicians-health-reform-law.html

Link to April 2008 survey in the Annals of Internal Medicine:
http://www.pnhp.org/docsurvey/annals_physician_support.pdf



Physicians for a National Health Program
29 E Madison Suite 602, Chicago, IL 60602
Phone [phone] | Fax: [phone]
www.pnhp.org | info {at} pnhp.org
© PNHP 2010

[Crazy Dave]

1. There's many doctors out there who really wish they could practice medicine...

...and do good things but if they want to get paid they can only do what the insurance companies tell them and let them do.

Even under Obama care :thumbsdown:

[Better Believe It]

2. K & R

[kestrel91316]

3. It's a pity that Congress and even the president won't pay this a moment's thought.

Because we all know this is going to be ignored.

[leftstreet]

4. K&R

[Dragonfli]

5. That's all well and good but what about the profits? Don't those docs care about the

most important part?
Thank Gawd the president cares about the plight of the downtrodden insurance companies.

Those doctors have no heart!

[Jim Sagle]

10. Change that runs up into the gazillions! Ka ching!

[Dragonfli]

12. People will pay everything they own, as if there lives depended on it!

A uniquely American money making opportunity, and if the marks can't afford it, there's money to be had in fines!

Hell half the time you don't even have to provide any actual care at all, and if you do, well, deductibles can keep being raised until the marks won't ever dare ask for the services.

Doctors just don't understand the importance of profits in this dawning new utopia.
Care is just a cost to be minimized, doctors should be required to do at least two years of business training just so they can learn this very important fact.

[maryf]

16. +1000!!

thanks for the laugh!! :)

[Starry Messenger]

6. k & r

[Mimosa]

7. How the hell did Obama get bamboozled when doctor advocating single payer wanted to talk to him?

The President's own family physician of over 20 years advocated for single payer and Obama would not meet with him, even as he was meeting with the health insurance and pharmaceutical corporate honchos.


The excerpt below comes from the 2nd link in the OP, the BC/BS survey of Massachusetts physicians:

"In 2006, Massachusetts enacted the country’s first law mandating near-universal health care coverage,1 and the state now has the lowest proportion of uninsured residents in the United States. The Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy estimated that only 2.7% of state residents remained uninsured as of spring 2009.2 National policymakers have turned to Massachusetts as a potential model for federal health care reform, and reform proposals recently put forward in Congress include elements from the Massachusetts plan, such as the individual mandate to buy insurance, public-program expansions, and a health insurance exchange.

Despite the state’s low percentage of uninsured residents, national reviews of the Massachusetts reform have been mixed, especially in recent months. Although some reports have drawn attention to the state’s insurance gains and indicated that health care costs, though growing, have not exceeded early projections or expectations, others have argued that high costs and some reported problems with access to care should be taken as warnings of the problems the country might face if a similar reform were implemented nationally. For example, Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute has called the Massachusetts reform “unsustainable” because of its “failure to restrain the growth in health care costs” and the fact that it has “set the stage for . . . price controls and explicit rationing.”3 Similarly, a June 24, 2009, post about the Massachusetts reform on the blog of John Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, said that “out of control costs” and “rationing” have been consequences of universal coverage in Massachusetts.



************************************************************************************

[denem]

8. Or 66% -two thirds did not prefer single payer.

n/t

[girl gone mad]

13. And 86% did not prefer the model..

for Obamacare.

[OHdem10]

9. The Doctors are so correct on this one. They know the Insurance

companies are the problem.

[csziggy]

11. K&R

[slipslidingaway]

14. knr nt

[maryf]

15. Everybody in with single payer

including the doctors! Medicare for all! K&R