The "Massachusetts Model" gets mauled

June 4, 2009 by Tinker Ready

Rough week for the Massachusetts Model

"Massive spending on non-benefit costs."

That’s the subtitle of a Health Affairs post about what is now known as "The Massachusetts Model."

The short synopsis: The cost of the paperwork will kill any cost savings:

"The 'reform' does nothing to reduce the untamed costs of matching hundreds of thousands of billings with thousands of plans containing differing, confusing rate schedules. Hordes of provider personnel must generate the billings, and then hordes of insurer administrators process them and pay — or often reject — billed items and then frequently wrangle over them with providers and patients."

Massachusetts model supporters also seemed a tiny bit defensive over the weekend at the "Massachusetts Teach-in on Health Reform: Massachusetts Reform as a National Model?" at Harvard Medical School.

Find more video from my coverage of the conference here.

Meanwhile, there is so much going on in D.C. this week, the news changes faster than the H1N1 cases count. So I suggest checking out the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog, National Public Radio's Health Blog, the Kaiser news page and, of course, The Boston Globe.

Rock Stars of Science: A little embarrassing…

 … or maybe I should give these guys a break for having some fun. 

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