Check out Chip Joffe Halpern’s new column on health reform in today’s North Adams Daily Transcript. Chip runs Ecu-Care which helps uninsured persons in Berkshire County get medical care and he’s the President of HCFA’s Board. Here’s a tidbit:
“We who work with the uninsured on a daily basis cannot shield ourselves from seeing the effect that lacking health coverage has on individuals and families. I am currently working with two uninsured women who are both cancer patients. Besides the trauma of the diagnosis and their uncertain futures, they are both facing the potential of overwhelming medical debt. So not only are they being challenged by their illnesses, but they are also being stripped of their dignity by the financial consequences of being uninsured.
“Both women would have health coverage under the bill passed by the House. Under the Senate bill, they would still be left uninsured.
“I cannot, in good conscience, tell these women they should wait for some mythical future, before we develop a “perfect” health care system that will satisfy all the health care stakeholders in the United States. That health care system never will exist, there will always be trade-offs. But Massachusetts lawmakers now have the potential of passing legislation that will bring relief to these two cancer patients, and to provide health coverage to the vast majority of the other 500,000 uninsured residents in Massachusetts.”
And a correction:
I stated in a previous post on MassHealth dental coverage for pregnant women and mothers with children up to age three that the Romney Administration had failed to respond to our letter we sent before Thanksgiving asking for a timeline for implementation of this service. I was incorrect. Deputy Medicaid Director Tom Dehner sent a reply letter on December 5th. My apology to Tom.
