Massachusetts is the state whose health care model that is being used for much of the Democrat’s plan. When Massachusetts plan was proposed, it was supposed to cost the State a few hundred thousand dollars each year. It is now costing more than twice what it was proposed to cost.
From the NY Times:
BOSTON — A hospital that serves thousands of indigent Massachusetts residents sued the state on Wednesday, charging that its costly universal health care law is forcing the hospital to cover too much of the expense of caring for the poor.
The central charge in the suit is that the state has siphoned money away from Boston Medical to help pay the considerable cost of insuring all but a small percentage of residents. Three years after the law’s passage, Massachusetts has the country’s lowest percentage of uninsured residents: 2.6 percent, compared with a national average of 15 percent.
Sound Familiar?
One of the state’s reimbursement rates to Boston Medical, dropped from $12, 476 in 2008 to $9,323 by 2009, the suit says.
Folks, this is one way that government rations. By reducing their payments to providers, for no reason other than they can, providers begin reducing the number of patients they will see or reduce the care the patients get. Is it lost on the D.C. crowd how many providers no longer accept Medicaid patients?
State officials have suggested that Boston Medical could reduce costs by operating more efficiently. The state has also pointed out that the hospital has reserves of about $190 million, but Tom Traylor, the hospital’s vice president of federal and state programs, said the reserves could only sustain the hospital for about a year.
Translation: You have money, therefore you can afford to get paid less or pay more to be a part of the program.
If the State is so good at identifying where cost reductions can be attained, why is it that they have a budget shortfall of $5 Billion? Can’t they state turn their own folks inward to find the waste and inefficiency in the State’s budget?
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