More Waiting in Massachusetts

Posted by Paul Hsieh in Health Care, Massachusetts on May 19th, 2009 | one response

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The cracks continue to widen in the Massachusetts "universal" health care plan. The May 15 Boston Globe reports that patients are waiting even longer for access to specialists:

Waits to see Hub doctors grow longer

Despite Boston's abundance of top-notch medical specialists, the waits to see dermatologists, obstetrician-gynecologists, and orthopedic surgeons for routine care have grown longer – to as much as a year for the busiest doctors.

A study of five specialties shows that the wait for a nonurgent appointment in the Boston area has increased in the past five years, and now averages 50 days – more than three weeks longer than in any other city studied.

Read the whole thing.

Too many politicians conflate "coverage" with actual medical care. Under "universal" systems, governments can promise plenty of theoretical "coverage", but not actual medical care.

Massachusetts patients know the difference between "coverage" and medical care. So do patients in Hawaii.

Will the rest of the country have to learn this lesson the hard way?

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One Response to “More Waiting in Massachusetts”

1. Learning from Massachussetts: More Coverage, More Spending | www.statehousecall.org says:

   November 11, 2009 at 9:53 am

   [...] of de facto rationing.” Left unsaid in the Monitor piece is that we’ve already seeing increased wait times in the state. No Related [...]