So last month we wrote about how rising healthcare cost continues to threaten the struggling Massachusetts healthcare reform effort. Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Director, Jon Kingsdale, has consistently reiterated that “If we don’t grapple seriously with the cost of health care, the support for reform will erode and the perception will become broader that it is unaffordable.”
Now James Arvantes reports on a study ( 2007 Physician Workforce Study produced by the Massachusetts Medical Society ) that also indicates another problem: physician supply. The Massachusetts healthcare plan, according to Arvantes “has created a growing demand for primary health care services that cannot be met with the state’s existing supply of primary care physicians, according to state officials.”
What we see happening in Massachusetts should make us think about what we will encounter in national healthcare reform. If it was going to be easy, as they say, it would have been done already. To a certain extent, increased consumer demand — and ability to pay — will eventually, if we believe in market economics, lead to increased physician supply. But that chain of causality make take a long time. In the meanwhile, universal coverage strategist have to be thinking of both the intended and unintended consequences of their plans.
