Massachusetts Learning Canada's Lesson

The road to universal health care in the US is going to be a long and rocky one; one that requires sacrifices from everyone: patients, caregivers, and politicians. Massachusetts is learning that lesson right now as one of the first states to mandate health care for its citizens. The problems that Massachusetts residents are seeing are not new problems for universal coverage states: they're problems that I've seen and experienced firsthand in Canada.

ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn writes in her article, Massachusetts finds unintended consequences in health care reform, of the numerous new problems that Bay Staters now face when searching for medical care: shortages of physicians, long wait times, and griping from family physicians about how their practices have turned into "episodic care" instead of preventive care. While these consequences may have been unintended, they certainly cannot have been unanticipated.

Having grown up in Canada, I have certainly experienced all of these firsthand. While I was a child, the annual doctor's checkup was a given, and something that I endured every year. When I entered my teens, we stopped going to the doctor regularly, mostly because the provincial health insurance plan stopped covering regular checkups. I never went as an adult either, unless I had something seriously wrong, and that was just a visit to the walk-in clinic. They, too, focused on episodic care, but a shortage of GPs meant that this was the best we could get.

It's not all bad though. This, in a way, forced patients to take better preventive measures and perform more home care. The Government of British Columbia even published a manual with information on how to treat minor conditions, and recognize major ones.

Massachusetts has an opportunity to show the US how health care should be done, and it can certainly take lessons from North of the Border. It can encourage physicians to open urgent care centers or walk-in clinics that treat minor ailments. It can remove the requirement for insurers to cover regular physicals, and instead only cover physician consults and repeat visits. It can educate the population on proper home care and preventive medicine. The growing pains that Bay Staters face are only temporary, but action needs to be taken lest they become permanent.