Editorial: We need docs, not blocks

In this editorial from the Boston Globe, editors say a a spate of health-facility construction in Massachusetts will inevitably add to the medical bills that employers and consumers must pay. "This boom in bricks and mortar is coming just as new data on patients' long waits for appointments with primary-care physicians show that the real need in the healthcare system is for more of these front-line practitioners," the editorial states. The article says that while expanding the corps of primary-care doctors is a problem that will require long-term changes in the incentives for medical students choosing specialties, the state can use its regulatory authority to crack down on questionable new health construction projects.