Comments on: “The Health Care Quality and Cost Council: Great Promise, but….” by Dr. B. Dale Magee

By: we're underfunded as well

we're underfunded as well — Thu, 24 May 2007 21:15:53 +0000

As with the legislative department of your corporation, I honestly believe you don’t know how to cut spending.

Does this wallpaper go with the new $500 million architecturally-significant carport and a few more suites at the august MGH?

Don’t the passengers get picked up in the drizzle or sunshine before they arrive?

How many other 500 million dollar projects are on the drawing board?

By: Chris

Chris — Thu, 24 May 2007 19:47:34 +0000

-”Fourth, the Council is basing its quality measures on nationally validated standards.”

But you don’t adhere to the idea that you stoop to the far inferior care level of national standards. You’re Massachusetts.

And there is no line anymore between MA government officials serving in their official capacity and private sector members. That’s been erased with Chapter 58.

By: Katharine London

Katharine London — Thu, 24 May 2007 18:44:48 +0000

I’d like to add a few clarifications to Dr. Magee’s commentary.

First, Dr. Magee is a member of the Health Care Quality & Cost Council’s Advisory Committee, not a member of the Council itself.

Second, the funding for the Council is still undetermined because the legislature is working through its budget process. Both the House and the Senate Ways & Means budgets include funding for the Council.

Third, 3 of the 13 members of the Council are physicians. 6 members are government officials serving in their official capacity, while 7 private sector members represent various areas of expertise.

Fourth, the Council is basing its quality measures on nationally validated standards.

The Council looks forward to continuing to work closely with Dr. Magee, the Massachusetts Medical Society, and the other members of the Council’s Advisory Committee to develop goals and stategies for improving the quality and containing the cost of health care in Massachusetts.

Katharine London
Executive Director
MA Health Care Quality & Cost Council

By: we're underfunded as well

we're underfunded as well — Thu, 24 May 2007 05:49:28 +0000

And yet we look off into the nearby horizon, and we see all these cranes, and glass and steel towers going up in the vicinity of Beth Israel and B&W (I’m sorry–”The Brigham”), and we wonder what is motivating this palatial edifice syndrome. All these never-ending shored-up holes in the ground with foundations being poured. All of this awestruck fanfare about “teaching hospital quality” care coming to some parking lot next to Gillette stadium for which Norwood Hospital supposedly just isn’t good enuff anymore.

We sir are underfunded. Our ability to pay for this stuff has a limit. With $4.00/gallon gasoline coming, and our jobs are all in hinterlands off 128 or 2, and we can’t get there by bus let alone train. Food prices moving inexorably higher. Our jobs being shipped off to Bangalore, our homes upside-down. Underemployed tenants that can’t pay the mortgages on our overpriced 2-families, and our second and third “investment” properties. Sallie Mae loans at double-digit interest schedules. Fed student loans dunned from our paychecks, and from the paychecks of our tenants, and which cannot be erased with bankruptcy.

There is a physical limit to what will be paid. So the Quality and Cost Council will have to come up with something beyond “goals” and trite, lofty sounding “patient-centered health care” bs. Quick.

Does the Massachusetts Medical Society have a crest?