Massachusetts’ emergency departments are overflowing with newly-insured patients. Don’t want to say I told you so but I can’t help it:
Doctors and counselors working the front lines of emergency care say a major reason patients still flock to their doors for routine care is that there are too few primary care physicians in Massachusetts. Some newly insured patients are waiting months for their first visits.
When you promise coverage without addressing physician access, this result is entirely predictable.
Why the Presidential candidates are not addressing poor physician access nationwide is a mystery to me. Those focusing on covering the uninsured will simply project the disaster happening in Massachusetts across the country.
Related posts:
- ER visits and health care costs rise in Massachusetts due to lack of primary care access
- Emergency department overcrowding
- Reforming health care using the Massachusetts model won’t relieve ER overcrowding
- ED overcrowding by the insured
- NY Times hearts Massachusetts
- Massachusetts primary care
- Massachusetts learns about the primary care shortage the hard way
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What to do then – admit that we are simply incapable of caring for everyone? Go back to having thousands of people uninsured because it is more practical to care for fewer people?
Put another way – is insuring everyone the problem, or is the problem that we don’t have enough primary care physicians? Let’s focus on the problem.
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