August is winding down, and although candidates are working hard for our attention, Massachusetts voters are focused on vacations, barbeques and stretching out summer. Aside from campaign canvassers and the people they speak to, most voters don’t think about primaries or elections until after Labor Day.
And even though the governor has finalized what the state will spend this year, we certainly don’t contemplate budgets. But something’s burning in the Massachusetts budget and it’s more than a brush fire.
For the last 15 years spending on healthcare has gone steadily up and spending on all other major line items, including overall spending on education, infrastructure, and aid to cities and towns, has gone down. This budget trend should have us all sweating no matter how high we crank the air conditioning. Because reducing our investments in education or infrastructure to fund growing healthcare costs is like a doctor saying, “We can keep the patient’s heart healthy, but not his kidneys or lungs.”
What’s worse is that approximately 30 percent of healthcare spending is wasted and, according to The McKinsey Global Institute, one of the biggest drivers of the waste is administration and insurance.
These numbers are shocking and so is the fact that no one is talking about them.
Well, almost no one. One candidate for governor has both the courage to talk about the implications of this spending trend and the experience to generate solutions.
Don Berwick, a physician who founded the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, was knighted by the Queen of England for improving the British healthcare system’s efficiency, and ran Medicare in the Obama administration, knows what he’s talking about.
And what he’s talking about is the cost savings and effectiveness of Medicare for all in Massachusetts.
Medicare, the health insurance that almost everyone over 65 has and loves, would transform the spending trend. It runs with one percent overhead cost instead of producing double-digit insurance company profits. It pays administrators government salaries not CEO packages, and has offices in government buildings not fancy corporate towers. With Medicare for all doctors and hospitals won’t have dozens of different insurance plans to administer and can focus on treating patients according to their needs not their insurance plans.
And why do we need to redirect where the state spends money? Ask schools kids and teachers in poor cities what they’re lacking. Ask towns spending two or three times the original costs to fix crumbling bridges that we’ve ignored. Ask people sitting in daily traffic jams or on buses and subways for hours a day what our transportation systems need.
Ask property owners who have paid higher taxes to make up for the lost aid to cities and towns, which is now less than half what it was in 2001. Imagine if they could have been buying goods and services instead that stimulate the state economy.
Massachusetts led the nation with a healthcare law that provided insurance for more of our residents than any other state. Now, with national healthcare in flux, we can lead again by providing better health care at lower cost. And we can build a better future by restoring allocations to education, housing, job development, and environmental safety, the vital organs of a thriving society.
So enjoy the end of summer by all means. But between now and our September 9 primary, when candidates or their volunteers knock on your door, ask them how they’ll interrupt the healthcare spending trend that threatens state. And ask them why we shouldn’t reap the benefits of America’s favorite healthcare plan.