Legos, Red Sox, and Those Long Waits in Massachusetts

New Republic by Jonathan Cohn | Jul. 8, 2009 (Opinion)
Funny video, but poor correlation between Massachusetts health care reform and increasing wait times.

(Blog Post) The suggestion that the 2006 health reform jacked up the price of health insurance misses one inconvenient fact: Insurance in Massachusetts was among the nation's most expensive long before the law took effect. There are a variety of reasons for that. The higher cost of living in New England has something to do with it. So does the heavy concentration of teaching hospitals. (Research suggests that when you have a lot of high-tech hospitals in an area, it ... Full Story »

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Derek Hawkins
4.2
 by Derek Hawkins - Jul. 8, 2009

Excellent analysis by Jon Cohn, an honest, articulate and well respected health care blogger. Here he examines the evidence that critics of the Massachusetts health care system offer, finding that the reforms the state enacted in 2006 are probably not responsible for long waiting periods and high costs.

The waiting time issue is a bit more complicated. Intuitively, it makes sense that giving more people insurance would lead many of those people to see the doctor, crowding the proverbial waiting room and creating long delays for appointments. And there have been widespread anecdotal reports that reform in Massachusetts did just that. But the statistical evidence to support this thesis turns out to be pretty thin.

Although Boston has the longest wait times now, it also had the longest wait times back in 2004, the last time Merritt Hawkins asked these questions.

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