By Cheryl R. Clark, Jane Soukup, Usha Govindarajulu, Heather E. Riden, Dora A. Tovar and Paula A. Johnson
Health Affairs
February 2011
Did the Massachusetts health reforms, which provided near-universal insurance coverage, also address problems of unmet need resulting from the cost of care and of inadequate preventive care for diverse patient groups? We found that nearly a quarter of adults who were in fair or poor health reported being unable to see a doctor because of cost during the implementation of the reforms. We also found that state residents earning less than $25,000 per year were much less likely than higher earners to receive screening for cardiovascular disease and cancer.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/30/2/247#aff-6
And…
More get waivers of health insurance
By Kay Lazar
The Boston Globe
February 7, 2011
Massachusetts regulators granted more exemptions last year to residents who said they could not afford the health insurance required by the state, waiving the tax penalty for more than half of those who appealed, according to state data.
That is prompting regulators to take a fresh look at how Massachusetts defines affordable when it comes to mandatory health insurance.
Massachusetts residents with the lowest family incomes, less than $33,075 for a family of four, make up the largest share — 43 percent — of the uninsured, according to state data.
“We may want to let them in [to government subsidized health insurance], but it would cost money, and we would have to decide if the state wants to spend money that way,” said committee member Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
Does an individual mandate to purchase private insurance with cost-sharing requirements ensure that citizens will have health care access and be able to afford it? It hasn’t in Massachusetts, and it will not throughout the United States because it is an irreparably flawed mechanism of financing health care.
The literature is replete with policies that would nudge us a little bit closer to the goals of affordability and expanded coverage, but, as Jonathan Gruber, an advocate of the private insurance mandate model, says, “we would have to decide if the state wants to spend money that way.”
But it’s the model, stupid! Dump it and replace it with an improved Medicare for all and then health care will be affordable for everyone. Why does Gruber and the others insist on separating state money from personal money, as if state money is sacred and personal money isn’t? It all belongs to us anyway.
