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Health reform preview? Program limits access to care

A company chosen by Massachusetts to provide health coverage for immigrants has few doctors who accept new patients, researchers said Wednesday, saying this could indicate what may happen under health care reforms enacted by President Barack Obama.
/ Source: Reuters

A company chosen by Massachusetts to provide health coverage for immigrants has few doctors who accept new patients, researchers said Wednesday, saying this could indicate what may happen under health care reforms enacted by President Barack Obama.

They also found the company did little to translate for the 30,000 immigrants, many of whom have limited English.

A survey showed very few doctors willing to take on new patients under the CeltiCare Health Plan, three doctors wrote in a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine.

The chief medical officer for CeltiCare, a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Centene Corporation, rejected the findings, calling them "both false and unfounded."

Dr. Ruth Hertzman-Miller of Harvard and her two colleagues who describe their survey in a letter, work at Cambridge Health Alliance, which she described as a "safety net" hospital. It was excluded from the CeltiCare network.

They are also members of Physicians for a National Health Program, an organization of 17,000 doctors who support single-payer national health insurance.

Massachusetts was a model for parts of the federal heathcare reform passed by Congress and signed into law by Obama in March. The reform is partly aimed at extending health insurance to 32 million Americans who lack it.

The three doctors said in a statement released through the organization that Obama's plan relies even more on such for-profit insurers than the Massachusetts program.

CeltiCare contracted with the state to care for its 30,000 legal immigrants for $1,300 per person, one-third of the state's previous cost.

Massachusetts was a model for parts of the federal heathcare reform passed by Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in March. The reform is partly aimed at extending health insurance to 32 million Americans who lack it.

To test the availability of CeltiCare doctors, Hertzman-Miller and her colleagues called 217 primary care doctors listed on CeltiCare's website in their area, posing as a relative of a chronically ill person who needed to see a physician soon.

Of the 163 they could reach, only 60, or 28 percent, were accepting new CeltiCare patients. The average wait time for an appointment was 33 days. And 38 of them offered translation services.

Dr. Robert LoNigro, CeltiCare's medical director, said in an e-mailed statement that the research "was designed to fit the conclusion that they seek to draw" and said surveys showed CeltiCare members were satisfied.