In 2006, Massachusetts passed health care reform that implemented a number of policies that are now being mirrored in the Obama health reform plan. The president has repeatedly claimed that his plan will lower health care costs but not decrease health care quality. This visualization looks at how the Massachusetts plan has panned out in terms of cost and wait times. Sources: Wait Times – Merrit Hawkins and Associates 2009 Survey of Physician Appointment Wait Times: www.merritthawkins.com Cost of Insurance Premiums – AHIP Center for Policy and Research Individual Health Insurance 2006-2007: A Comprehensive Survey of Premiums, Availability, and Benefits – www.ahipresearch.org
Tags: Health, Lego, Obama, reform, Times, Visualization, wait
…Exactly HOW would having almost everyone covered by insurance in a particular state somehow “increase waiting times”? Have you even thought this through, 10000 pennies?
@ZOMGsnails Maybe in oregon…I had to wait 5 months for my last appointment…in oregon…
@phatboi1221 And why would then 78.4% of the United States claim to be Christian then?… Check your facts before you tweak..
@TommyCraw Did you just call the United States a Christian country? How the fuck could you say that? The US is the most diversely populated of all the countries, including Race, Ethnicity, and Religion. It’s called the “Melting Pot” for a reason. Don’t try to generalize the US with that Christian trash. We humans created God, not the other way around.
@TheIvanMidnight
so he left out an s. it’s called a typo. don’t have a heart attack, grammar nazi.
Univeral…learn to spell!
@geekalpha also every citizen of mass has the same base coverage and any other insurance is supplemental, while GA’s numbers are offset by a large number of people with bare minimum insurance that’s inferior to the basic Mass. coverage.
Apples and Oranges. $200 cost does not include co-pays and the like. Private health insurance is not all-inclusive, so the comparison is deceptive.
When you run the numbers for average health care costs: Mass: $622 and GA: $466, which is a ratio of 1.33:1, which is incidentally the ratio of total cost of living between the two states.
Your data does not support your implied conclusion.
@ZOMGsnails you in math what they call an outlier. your position does not reflect the majority of the population it means your outside the norm. just like not everyone who gets rabies dies from it but for most it is fatal.
What is the source behind the info in this video?
@TommyCraw You’re looking at only one side of the issue. COBRA isn’t free. It’s paid for by taxes. If your taxes were lower, your mom would have a lot more money from NOT paying taxes.
Sorry about your loss.
@tjohn1986 Why should you be asked for insurance when were a Christian country? Shouldn’t we look out for everyone and not ask if you have an insurance card? My dad died last September and my mom is having a hard time paying for insurance. If it wasn’t for COBRA I don’t know where my mom would be.
@TommyCraw It’s hire not higher.
Medicare denies more claims than ANY private insurance company. DERP!
I live in atl and have never had to wait 11 days
@dfisk79 Insurance companies also higher people to deny your claims.
@dfisk79 That’s not true. The people coming from Canada aren’t supportive of free healthcare. My dad worked in the Auto business and he talked to a lot of people in Canada about their healthcare. The ones he talked to loved it. Waiting times are not true either. Also, a few years back my dad had his blood pressure checked and it was high. However before he went to the hospital they asked for his insurance card. He had to go through his pockets with wires on him to find his insurance card.
@TommyCraw Actually, you are wrong. My father works in medicine in Illinois, and his cardiac surgery group gets lots of people that come down from Canada because they can’t wait weeks or months in Canada to get surgery done that people may have to wait a few days or a week for here. Happens all the time.
This is untrue. Universal healthcare is great. People have to pay a litle more in taxes but they get better care. Canada has a great healthcare system. The Republicans and their corporate buddies don’t want you to know that. The Republican plan is to let people wait in waiting rooms and die. The Republicans would rather see you not get healthcare at all. They want all the low income people to not be able to see a doctor.
Love to all regardless of your views.
Sorry but you, and this tea party, and like-minded GOP leaders have acted as THE ENEMY OF THE AMERICAN WORKING CLASS.
We get the message.
Cutting excess spending makes sense. But you couldnt even say one word about asking for one TINY CRUMB back out from tax loopholes and corruption of corporate elites.
You have to put all the BURDEN of AMERICAN WORKERS
Shell and Exxon, the highest gas prices ever+the highest profits ever.
WORKERS’ ENEMY !
I don’t know about averages, but I live 25 miles WEST of Boston and can generally get a doctor’s appointment in a day or two. Boston has a lot of specialized hospitals, which might explain a lot of the delay. My grandson needed neonatal heart surgery and it took a couple of weeks to schedule him, in Boston, but there are only a few places in the world where they do that surgery. He would be dead today without it.
this theme of “everyone deserve a health care” that have been passed around just shows you how weak in the health & living aspect is for this country.
@jeffbriem – And his spelling needs some work, too. “Univeral.”
Your math is solid. Your baseball preferences are terrible.
How dare you use a real life example to disprove ALL of The One’s beautiful dreams of hope and change and pet unicorns for the underprivileged yet overfed children!? Why do you hate unicorns…and fat kids?!
@ZOMGsnails They want it reformed alright: They just think that it is the companies that are screwing up, completely ignoring the government stuff already inside: Medicare, Medicaid, absurd laws demanding that insurance comes from your state only, etc.