Romneycare Crisis
Timing is everything in comedy and politics (some would argue the two are one in the same), and it couldn’t get much worse for Mitt Romney.
The former Massachusetts governor and current wannabe presidential candidate is scheduled this week to deliver a healthcare speech to deflect criticism of his signature Romneycare legislation that requires nearly every resident in the Bay State to secure insurance coverage. Romney, the narrative goes, will lay out the reasons for repealing Obamacare and replacing it with something akin to Romneycare.
Meanwhile, two new reports show Romneycare failing miserably, delivering longer waits for doctors appointments and doing little to ease the crunch of emergency room visits. This from The Boston Globe’s White Coat Notes:
A new poll of 838 Massachusetts doctors finds patients are still waiting weeks — in some cases as long as a month and a half — for non-urgent appointments with primary care physicians and certain specialists.
Surveyors for the Massachusetts Medical Society called doctors’ offices in February and March and asked when they could come in for routine care. They requested a new patient appointment with internists, family practitioners, and pediatricians; an appointment for heartburn with gastroenterologists; a heart check-up with cardiologists; an appointment for knee pain with orthopedic surgeons; and a routine exam with obstetrician/gynecologists.
The average wait ranged from 24 days for an appointment with a pediatrician to 48 days to see an internist. The wait for an internist was actually down slightly, from 53 days in a similar 2010 survey, but the waits for family doctors, gastroenterologists, orthopedists, and ob/gyns increased.
It gets worse. One of the main goals and promises of RomneyCare was to reduce emergency room visits. How’s that going? Not so good:
When the Massachusetts Legislature made health insurance mandatory five years ago, supporters of the first-in-the-nation law hoped it would keep patients out of hospital emergency rooms.
Patients with insurance, the theory went, would have better access to internists, family practitioners, and pediatricians, lessening their reliance on emergency rooms for routine care.
There is more evidence today that it did not turn out that way.
Three-quarters of Massachusetts emergency room physicians who responded to a survey last month said the number of patients in their ERs climbed in the last year.
They cited ”physician shortages” along with a growing elderly population as the top two reasons why more patients come to ERs.
….
The number of doctors who responded to the survey by the American College of Emergency Physicians — 56 from this state — is small. But their responses echo findings from last July, when state health officials found that ER visits rose 9 percent from 2004 to 2008, to about 3 million visits a year.
Now insert Obama for Romney, tack on Care, and you get a glimpse of what’s looming on the national horizon for healthcare. Longer waits to see a doctor, compromised care once and if you do, higher costs, and more quick fix, pricey emergency room visit to fill the gaps.
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