Obama Health Reform and Wait Times Visualization (In Lego!)

In 2006, Massachusetts passed health care reform that implemented a number of policies that are now being mirrored in the Obama health reform plan. The president has repeatedly claimed that his plan will lower health care costs but not decrease health care quality. This visualization looks at how the Massachusetts plan has panned out in terms of cost and wait times.

Sources:

Wait Times - Merrit Hawkins and Associates 2009 Survey of Physician Appointment Wait Times: http://www.merritthawkins.com/pdf/mha2009waittimesurvey.pdf

Cost of Insurance Premiums - AHIP Center for Policy and Research Individual Health Insurance 2006-2007: A Comprehensive Survey of Premiums, Availability, and Benefits - http://www.ahipresearch.org/pdfs/Individual_Market_Survey_December_2007.pdf

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• President
• Obama
• healthcarereform
• massachusetts
• news
• commentary
• analysis
• grassroots
• legos
• lego
• visualization
• waittimes

[ZOMGsnails]

I live in Georgia. I saw an allergist last week within 3 days of making an appointment, which is not a strange occurance. All around the state we have walk-in clinics that can see you within an hour of stepping into the building... and still people want this reformed?!

[fart1fart1]

I started to call bs too until I looked at page 9 of the source document. he took the average wait times of all the practices, dermatology, family practice, ect and averaged them. when you average the practices for wait times you get 11.2 days for Atalanta and 49.6 days for Boston. Not sure about the month vs year payment. will have to take your word for it.

[drshlotzkin]

serially serial?

Hold on a second....

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLROFLMFAO!

[NevadaB88]

People have been bitching and complaining about healthcare in this country for over three decades and Obama has been the first person in office with the balls to do something about it. Obama 2012.

[NevadaB88]

This video is just ridiculous and completely false. I lives in Massachusetts and if I made an appointment I was seen in three days. And if I couldn't wait that long, I did a walk-in and was seen in one hour.

[CHUBBLE117]

so when you catch a good ol case of leukemia, lemme know how you like the bills.

[palmisano]

If medical care is 'free', people would see doctors for anything and everything. Simple economics 101 laws of supply and demand. Supply (doctors) is fixed, but demand goes up. This creates a shortage.

[palmisano]

Sample size of one single state doesn't hold much weight . . . the author should factor in wait times in other countries that have already implemented socialist medicine. I don't know the numbers, but I'm betting that one state is statistically relevant . . .

[coolcatevan9]

Wait for an Appointment? Thats Ridiculous!

[SuperHealthyHealth]

Interesting health reform info.

[netttels]

Ron Paul 2012

[davijeph]

Socialism can be interpreted to mean many things depending on who is doing the interpreting. If by state ownership you mean the owning the means of production and all land and property that's not socialism thats communism. Does the US own the means of production, land and property? No,the US is not communist but it is certainly socialist. It is democratic process that decides what law is made and enforced not socialism or indeed capitalism.