Let’s be clear on what we should take away from the recent U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts.

The Massachusetts special election was not a referendum on health care; citizens of Massachusetts already have a system of near-universal coverage (97.3 percent) — and 79 percent of them want to keep it. In fact, Senator-elect Scott Brown campaigned by instilling fear in voters that they would be subsidizing benefits like their own for the rest of the country.

We cannot allow these election results to be used as an excuse to derail health care reform. It’s too important to fail.

We need to regulate insurance companies so that no one is denied coverage on the basis of a prior medical problem or the development of an illness. We need to extend affordable coverage to the majority of the 47 million who have no insurance. Whether we realize it or not, all of us are subsidizing the uninsured in some manner. We need to ease the burden on small businesses caused by escalating health care costs, and we need to prevent personal bankruptcies due to inadequate health coverage. U.S. health care ranks at the top in many categories (cancer, emergency care), but anyone who believes it is the “best in the world” has not looked closely at what we spend per capita and how that translates to outcomes in many public health measures in which our performance is embarrassing (infant mortality, obesity-related morbidities such as diabetes and hypertension, life expectancy). The status quo is unacceptable.

May J. Reed, M.D.

Member, Doctors for America