Dr. Bruce Gould, medical director of the Burgdorf Health Center

Dr. Bruce Gould, medical director of the Burgdorf Health Center, said Thursday¿s decision was a relief.

"As one of those of us who are or were the safety nets, I was just having nightmares that this was going to be overturned," he said. "If you re a student of history, the United States has tried to take some shot at responsible health care for all of our citizens about every 15 years."

As medical director of the Burgdorf Health Center in Hartford's north end, Gould sees a lot of people who will benefit directly from the Affordable Care Act. The change from being insured to uninsured, he said, is often just a matter of a quick series of events.

"There was one woman who got a new job, and it was a reasonably good job," he said, The one snag was that she had diabetes. "The insurance company said it would insure her but not anything that had to do with her pre-existing condition," he said. "How do you separate someone from their illness?"

He knows some doctors whom he can turn to who will agree to treat patients who don't have coverage, but altruism can go only so far. If you're the only in town taking on Medicaid patients," he said, "you're going to go under."

The Affordable Care Act, he said, is the first step toward changing that.

"We're gong to have to tweak it, some states will experiment with doing things better," he said. "It will be a work in progress, and we will fix it. But it's a start."

June 30, 2012