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Sen. Moore featured on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal program

MA State Senator speaks about health reform in the Commonwealth

PHILADELPHIA – Ending a week filled with dozens of meetings and events during the National Conference of State Legislature’s (NCSL) Annual Legislative Summit in Philadelphia, Sen. Richard T. Moore, D-Uxbridge, was recently featured as a guest on C-SPAN’s morning program of Washington Journal.

As Senate Chairman of the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Health Care Financing, and one of the key architects of Massachusetts’s landmark Health Care Reform of 2006, and its counterpart legislation, The Quality and Cost Containment law of 2008, Sen. Moore was invited to discuss his extensive knowledge and experiences with Massachusetts health reform, and how it may serve as a model for national reform efforts. Washington Journal is a nationally televised program that invites key political legislators and leaders to discuss a topic of interest, intermittently fielding phoned-in questions from across the country.

“While our health care reform system is still a work in progress, we believe it to be extremely successful and a true model for reform efforts at the national level,” Sen. Moore offered in the program’s opening. Many, including the White House, have cited Massachusetts as the nation’s leading state in offering guidance for national health reform developments.

The main topics discussed by Sen. Moore included how Massachusetts operates its health insurance coverage for disenfranchised individuals through the Commonwealth Connector; the truth behind the actual reform efforts not increasing in costs since the program’s inception in 2006; and hospital and insurance providers’ positive reception and praise of the Massachusetts health care system.

Though Sen. Moore fielded questions from viewers across the country, including New Jersey, Texas and Florida, he was posed a concern by one of his very own constituents in Milford, MA. The comment offered by Milford resident “Mike,” regarded the potential threat of national health reform’s effects on primary care physicians, and the possible decline of primary care physicians that could occur as a result of a nationalized system.

In response to Mike’s question, Sen. Moore emphasized that Massachusetts is already taking major steps in encouraging medical school students to enter the primary care profession. Sen. Moore referred to the Quality and Cost Containment Law of 2008, which grants guidelines for how we level the playing field in paying physicians as opposed to specialists, as well as Massachusetts’s mission in working with its many medical schools, in encouraging doctors to enter primary care.

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