With the continuing issues with the Health Connector/MassHealth enrollment website, we get asked the following questions constantly: The old web site worked just fine. Why did they need to build a new one? Why can't they just go back to … [Read more...]
Massachusetts Health Reform Outcomes Paint Troubling Picture for National Reform
Mass-Care and Massachusetts Physicians for a National Health Program today released a comprehensive new report on the outcomes of the Massachusetts Health Reform law, as well as analysis of 5 years of media coverage of the law. The results … [Read more...]
The Year’s Most Predictable “Bombshell”: Accountable Care Organizations Won’t Work
WBUR's online health care blog, "CommonHealth," has a flashy headline article today titled Massachusetts Attorney General Drops Health Reform Bombshell. What's the bombshell? That the state's proposal to control health care costs by … [Read more...]
SJC Rules For Equal Health Rights For All Legal Immigrants
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled today (read the decision) that the state's removal of a group of legal immigrants from the Commonwealth Care program violated the equal protection guarantees of the state Constitution. The … [Read more...]
Mass. Doctors Snub State Health Reform As Model for Country, Pick Single Payer
The Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS) yesterday released its annual Physician Workforce Study (a survey of 1,000 practicing physicians in the state), which, as in recent years, showed very serious shortages in primary care. However, … [Read more...]
Health Reform Part 2: Cost Control and Accountable Care Organizations
So the task force on Payment Reform issued a report declaring (without actually bother to prove) that our fee-for-service payment system, by which we reimburse physicians per visit or per procedure, was driving up costs by giving them an … [Read more...]
Harvard Pilgrim’s Medicare Bailout & Health Care “Competition”
Medicare Advantage plans were created in 2003 under George W. Bush and a Republican majority in both houses of Congress to privatize Medicare: it allowed seniors to choose a private insurance company to manage their Medicare benefits … [Read more...]
Mac Wants Traction
He seems to us to like the anti-incumbent, giving Dem primary voters a distinct option. The oddly formed 9th runs from South Boston West to Norfolk and South to Plymouth.The electorate is mostly white and white-collar, with a range of … [Read more...]
Murphy Wants To Be Aggressive Treasurer
While he and Grossman each propose a half billion dollar fund for such goals, Murphy would like MA to go solo on this. It would require making those safe investment decisions with the pension money, but a fund solely with state money … [Read more...]
Senator Paul Kirk – the man with the Vote
I think people who care about health care reform passing should all start paying attention to our interim Senator, instead of speculating about what the candidates might have done last Saturday or might do if they were in the Senate. … [Read more...]