Mandated health insurance causing problems in MA

An unexpected crisis has occurred in Massachusetts, now that everyone has to have health insurance. There simply aren't enough doctors to see the flood of new patients.

According to this article in the NYT, the new patient core has reached a critical mass. "Since last year, when the landmark law took effect, about 340,000 of Massachusetts’ estimated 600,000 uninsured have gained coverage. Many are now searching for doctors and scheduling appointments for long-deferred care."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/05/us/05doctors.html?em&ex=1207713600&en=6d92bd628a87fdd2&ei=5087%0A

If those statistics are correct, it means almost half of the uninsured population still haven't fulfilled the mandate. No one is talking about enforcement just yet, even though Sen. Clinton and Barack Obama have been sparring over the question of mandating health insurance since the beginning of their campaigns. The most pressing problem right now seems to be the long wait patients have to see any doctor.

“It is a fundamental truth — which we are learning the hard way in Massachusetts — that comprehensive health care reform cannot work without appropriate access to primary care physicians and providers,” Dr. Bruce Auerbach, the president-elect of the Massachusetts Medical Society, told Congress in February."

During the last few years, a large decrease in the amount of students seeking a career as primary care physicians has been blamed on the low profit margins they can earn in primary care. The cost of securing a medical education has also been rising rapidly, so many students are reluctant to become primary care physicians.

One plan to seduce more young people into primary health care includes loan forgiveness. Clinics in drug stores and malls, manned mostly by a team of physician assistants and nurses with only a few doctors supervising, could also alter the medical landscape.

Is mandated health insurance a good idea? Of course it is. Everyone in this country deserves to have decent medical care, but what is the sense of mandating something that has no teeth? If half the MA population still hasn't purchased health insurance, why persist in adding to the problem? There are no statistics showing who these people are, and this is curious. Our courts are already overburdened. The last thing they need is to be flooded with more cases than do little to provide us with a more protection from real criminals.

This statement certainly won't make patients trust their doctors more:

"Officials with several large health systems said their primary care practices often lose money, but generate revenue for their companies by referring patients to profit centers like surgery and laboratories."

The health care system is a mess. Quick-fix solutions like mandated health care sound compassionate, but it would seem a slower approach to universal health care might be more realistic. Perhaps not mandating it would lessen the kinds of problems MA is suffering right now? Perhaps the next president should spend more time listening to what patients actually want and need, rather than relying on experts in the medical and pharmaceutical fields speak for them?

The entire health system in America is a mess, but in order to fix it properly shouldn't a lot more thought go into the way universal health care will be structured? If universal health care doesn't have a clear execution plan and reasonable goals, it will be deemed by those who oppose it to be a failure, and that would be a terrible shame.

Choice is always better than anything forced. This rush to see that every single person in America is enrolled in a health care plan may not be neforceable. One thing we certainly don't need in America is another law that involves the government making choices for citizens. The crisis in MA should make people stop and think before they jump on the mandated health insurance bandwagon. It just might be going nowhere.