Health Care

The most difficult realities are oftentimes the most important to accept. Now is one such time, as the state’s healthcare system buckles under the weight of unsustainable cost pressures and is showing once unimaginable signs of peril.

Why is the realization of this dream of equitable healthcare in Boston so urgent? Because the epidemiological landscape demands it.

The Massachusetts Health and Hospital Association reports a $220 million Healthy Safety Net deficit for fiscal year 2025, following $380 million deficits in FY 2023 and 2024, totaling $600 million.  It raises the question how exactly are hospitals burning through so much cash?

Massachusetts is now the state with the second-highest family health insurance premiums in the country, behind only New Jersey.   We were fourth or fifth highest a few years ago, so we’re going in the wrong direction.

Carney is closing on the heels of dramatic financial mismanagement and bankruptcy – but the trajectory of Carney’s closure is not an anomalous case. Across the country, for-profit systems are buying up struggling hospitals, otensibly in a last-ditch effort to save them, only to watch them shutter years later. 

The faster Apollo is out the door the better. Though Apollo will certainly contest the Commonwealth’s $4.5 million fair market valuation for St. Elizabeth’s, state officials seem determined that any fight over money will not interrupt plans for an immediate seizure of the Brighton land and buildings.

As the incidence of cancers continues to soar, advances in cancer detection tools have become just as important as the development of new treatments.

While much of Massachusetts’ medical care system remains resolutely non-profit, the signs of for-profit encroachment are slow, silent, and everywhere. 

Last month, Boston Medical Center convened a coalition of national emergency department leaders for the second straight year to recommend solutions to strengthen existing care models and develop achievable solutions that will help patients thrive beyond emergency care.

With the number of people covered by public insurance growing – MassHealth covers about 2 million people, or 30 percent of the Massachusetts population – so too have the cross-subsidies borne by employers, employees, and taxpayers.  Given our aging population and the shrinkage of our small group health insurance market, these cross subsidies by the private market will likely grow larger without intervention.  Higher Medicaid reimbursement rates to providers could alleviate this cost-shift burden.