Dear Colleagues:
Every now and then you can be heard in the legislature.
Despite tremendous pressure to exact tremendous cuts in health care during a particularly acute financial crisis, efforts to assuage those cuts were successful in the closing weeks of the legislative session. In large measure the collective voices of physicians were heard as elected officials debated dropping 36,000 people permanently from Medicaid coverage.
While the legislature did not restore all of the cuts to health care this year, the extraordinary efforts of physicians at BWH, the BWPO, Massachusetts General Hospital and the MGPO made a significant difference in the legislative deliberations. A letter signed by more than 500 physicians at these institutions outlined the deep concerns that the medical community harbored about the state’s actions to close a $3 billion gap at the expense of patients and caregivers throughout Massachusetts (see related article on page 11).
The budget passed by the legislature provides more than $57 million in uncompensated care pool assessment relief for hospitals and restores coverage for individuals who lost MassHealth Basic benefits last April. The budget provides $118 million in pool shortfall relief, stabilizing this critical funding source. In the wake of the most devastating budget year, we should take some notion of satisfaction that more draconian actions were forestalled. As we continue to manage through this difficult economic environment, the challenges before us all as caregivers remain.
Sincerely yours,
Lawrence H. Cohn, MD
Chairman, BWPO