New Massachusetts Bill to Slash $200B from State Healthcare Costs

This is a guest blog note by Joe Plandowski who has been a frequent contributor to Lab Soft News in the past. --BAF

About a week ago, Governor Patrick of Massachusetts signed Bill S 2400 into law. The goal of this bill is to reduce healthcare costs through increased transparency, efficiency and innovation. According to The Boston Globe, Gov. Patrick stated at the signing: “We are ushering in the end of the fee-for-service care system in Massachusetts.” I believe a far more accurate comment by the Governor might have been “We are shuttering the healthcare system in Massachusetts.”

When Massachusetts physicians return from their mid-August vacations to Cape Cod and discover what just happened to them, all hell will break loose. Bill S 2400, now law, takes effect on November 15, 2012. Its goal is to slash an estimated $200 billion from Massachusetts healthcare costs over the next 15 years. For that to happen, physicians (and hospitals) will have to cut their costs in half.

That goal is impossible. The margins necessary for such cuts do not exist in any physicians’ practices (or any hospitals or hospital systems). There will be no physicians (or hospitals) left in Massachusetts if that goal is to be achieved. This can only be a bureaucrats’ dream. I can’t image any physician with at least two functioning brain cells willingly buying into Bill S 2400. That is a disaster waiting to unfold. Let’s hope this is not a foretelling of the future of Obamacare. Regardless, healthcare is in for some very tough times in the near term. There is no question, healthcare costs must be controlled. But doing it the Massachusetts way is not the answer.

Comments

[Greg Ellcessor]

"Let’s hope this is not a foretelling of the future of Obamacare"

I'm not sure what you meant by this. Did you mean that this bill has the same language and goals of Obama's healthcare bill? I'm not a huge fan of Obama's affordable care act (I'm a staunch supporter of a single-payer healthcare system where everyone has a general unified plan covered completely under the umbrella of Medicaid, everyone in, nobody out) but it does expand the Medicaid program in all states that choose to accept it, which means a lot more money being put into the healthcare industry, with less overhead going to CEOs and being payed out to shareholders (Medicaid is a non-profit system with exponentially less overhead than health insurance companies). I just don't get your link to the Massachusettes governer slashing medical spending to Obama's health care bill. Please explain your connection...

[Ajit Alles]

While it may not be final the answer, it will certainly stir the pot and get physicians and hospitals to acknowledge that business as usual cannot continue.