Physicians support Massachusetts health law
Amid contentious Congressional debate about health care reform, a new poll indicates that physicians on the front lines in Massachusetts, by a five-to-one margin, support the state's closely-watched 2006 overhaul, which is considered a national model.
Three quarters of the 2,135 physicians surveyed said they wanted the law to continue, but nearly half said there should be changes, most notably to ensure more comprehensive coverage for their patients and to control costs.
The poll, by the Harvard School of Public Health, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, found that just seven percent favor repealing the law. The survey was published today in a special online edition of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Physicians were asked about 22 aspects of their practices that might have been affected by the law -- from the quality of patient care to the amount of time patients wait to get an appointment -- and a majority said that the law either did not have much of an effect or was having a positive effect on their practice. However a third of those surveyed said that the law has increased their administrative burdens.
"The real question outside Massachusetts has been: are patients going to suffer if reform is passed?" said Robert J. Blendon, a health policy professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and the poll's co-director.
“If you had a national law like the one in Massachusetts," Blendon said, "you would not expect that care for patients would be deteriorating as a result of the law."
However, when physicians were asked to assess the impact of the law on health care in the state as a whole, more negative aspects emerged, particularly involving costs. Fifty-three percent said the law hurt the overall cost of care in the state and about a third said it also had a negative effect on patient costs.
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Elizabeth Cooney is a former
health reporter for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, where she also was a
business reporter and an editor. Earlier in her career, she edited medical
books and journals at Little, Brown, and worked for Boston magazine.Boston Globe Health and Science staff:
- Gideon Gil, Health and Science Editor
- Ishani Ganguli, Short White Coat blogger
