Despite all the wishful thinking in the world, politicians cannot guarantee that people get required medical care by making it a crime for them not to have insurance (as defined by politicians.) From last week’s Boston Globe:
The wait to see primary care doctors in Massachusetts has grown to as long as 100 days, while the number of practices accepting new patients has dipped in the past four years, with care the scarcest in some rural areas.
Now, as the state’s health insurance mandate threatens to make a chronic doctor shortage worse, the Legislature has approved an unprecedented set of financial incentives for young physicians, and other programs to attract primary care doctors. But healthcare leaders fear the new measures will take several years to ease the shortage.
Senate President Therese Murray, who championed the legislation, said that many of the roughly 439,000 people who obtained health coverage under the 2006 insurance law are struggling to find a doctor. “You can take a look at the whole state and you are not going to find a primary care physician anytime soon,” she said in an interview.
(via FIRM)
