Brown Pushes To Relax Health Insurance Regulations
BOSTON — State Senator Scott Brown is sponsoring legislation that would release health insurance plans in Massachusetts from covering some health care. He also said if he is elected to the U.S. Senate, he will vote against the health care reform making its way through Congress.
The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate said he opposes the health care plan passed by the Senate last week because Massachusetts already covers almost everyone. Brown also said Massachusetts should contain costs in its state health insurance program.
“One way to do that is … by removing burdensome regulations that drive up the price of insurance policies,” he said.
Brown is proposing to eliminate the requirement that health insurance plans cover in-vitro fertilization and chiropractic care. He said current regulations also place an undue burden on people who own their own businesses and must buy a minimum of prescription drug coverage.
Brown’s Democratic opponent, Attorney General Martha Coakley, said Brown’s legislation would also threaten coverage for hospice care, mammograms and bone marrow transplants for cancer patients.
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[...] enjoyed in Massachusetts — like ending denial of preexisting conditions — are “burdensome” and “drive up the price of insurance [...]
[...] Read more on WBUR Boston [...]
The Journal of the American Medical Association July 2000 published an article by Barbara Starfield. Each year in the US there are: 12,000 deaths from unnecessary surgeries; 7,000 deaths from medication errors in hospitals; 20,000 deaths from other errors in hospitals; 80,000 deaths from infections acquired in hospitals; 106,000 deaths from FDA-approved correctly prescribed medicines.
The total of medically-caused deaths in the US every year is 225,000. This makes the medical system the third leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease and cancer.
Other important facts came to light with the publishing of this paper: 2.1 million people in America, every year, are hospitalized as a result of reactions to FDA-approved medicines. Annually, 36 million serious adverse reactions to those drugs occur. This article should have caused a big concern for the publics interest. Of course, that never happened. If you really want to cut costs then do something about the real costs.
Stop singling out a small profession like the chiropractors!!
Boston Health News: Coakley take note: State requires coverage for outdated breast cancer treatment:
…The reason Mass added bone marrow transplants for BC to the list is that — even though women were demanding it –the procedure was unproven and considered experimental. Now the results are in and have been for a while– BMT doesn’t help. But the mandated coverage remains on the books. It’s far from the only outdated statute in Mass, but Coakley might want to reconsider her continuing support for it.