By Andy Metzger | WWLP News, Channel 22 NBC
BOSTON - Five years after redrawing the lines in the national health care debate, Beacon Hill is looking at new reforms, closely studying payment system plans to lower costs and examining a government controlled single-payer model.

The Massachusetts plan has been successful only in nominally increasing the numbers of individuals insured, but at a trade-off of making almost everything else worse, including the insurance coverage itself. The federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) used the Massachusetts model, and experience with the implementation to date indicates that we can expect the same or similar fundamental deficiencies, making unaffordable under-insurance the new national standard.

By Trudy Lieberman | Columbia Journalism Review
Last week the Census Bureau released new numbers showing that 5.6 percent of the population in Massachusetts remained without health insurance coverage. That’s a 42 percent drop in the number of the state’s uninsured since the law took effect in 2006. A new study by the Cambridge Health Alliance, one of the state’s safety net providers, showed who was left out, putting a human face on those without insurance. The findings are illuminating given that the Bay State’s health law is the model for the national law, which takes full effect in 2014, and the Romney-Perry feud often flares up around the topic of health reform in the state.

By Carey Goldberg | CommonHealth, WBUR
The reasons why people lacked insurance varied, from having recently lost coverage through a job to fear of giving their personal data.

Editorial | Cape Cod Times
Despite a recent setback at the federal appeals court level, health care reform still represents the nation's best solution to not only a broken health insurance system, but to our country's long-term deficit problems.

By Scott O'Connell | The MetroWest Daily News (Framingham, Mass.)
Four members of a panel at Framingham State University last night gave their pitch for a single-payer health care system in the state, saying it would streamline administration, make care more widely available and potentially save billions of dollars.

From Mass-Care
WBUR's online health care blog, "CommonHealth," has a flashy headline article today titled "Massachusetts Attorney General Drops Health Reform Bombshell." What's the bombshell? That the state's proposal to control health care costs by moving people into accountable care organizations (ACOs) is unlikely to work, because patients who are currently covered by similar arrangements receive care that as just as expensive as everyone else.

By Jason Millman | The Hill
An individual mandate has done little to stem the rate of medical bankruptcies in Massachusetts, boding poorly for the federal healthcare reform law enacted almost a year ago, according to a new liberal study.

By Eryn Brown | Los Angeles Times
Studying medical bankruptcies in Massachusetts, whose recent healthcare reform was a model for national reform, researchers found that while new insurance rules increased the number of people who had coverage, those rules did not improve coverage -- leaving many still struggling with medical debt.

By Kyle Cheney | Boston Herald
A senior Patrick administration health care official said Friday that a single payer system may work more effectively and efficiently than Massachusetts’s existing insurance market, a high-profile endorsement that raised eyebrows at a legislative hearing.

Simeon Kimmel | Letters | The Boston Globe
I applaud The Globe for showcasing Vermont’s single-payer “laboratory’’ in its Jan. 2 editorial “Vermont: Creating a singular health system.’’ As a third-year medical student at Cambridge Health Alliance, I’ve found that it doesn’t take long to see that the current system is insufficient.

By Edward B. Colby | Dedham (Mass.) Transcript
Leo Stolbach says he’s working to advance a single-payer health insurance system for Massachusetts because he sees what’s happening to patients now.

By Benjamin Day and Peter Hiam | The Boston Globe
NOW THAT Congress has passed a national health reform bill that will not fully kick in until 2014, attention will focus again on this state’s effort to make a success of near-universal coverage.

By Susanne King | The Berkshire Eagle
Aetna, Cigna, Humana, United Health, and Wellpoint scored record profits totaling $12.2 billion. In 2008, Ron Williams, CEO of Aetna, received over $24 million in compensation, about $450,000 per week. His weekly compensation would be enough to pay the yearly salary of three family doctors, whose median income in the United States is $159,000 per year.

By Russell Mokhiber | Single Payer Action
Single payer activists David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler are moving to New York City. In the fall of 2010, they will become full professors at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Health at Hunter College.

By Sylvia Thompson and Iyah Romm | The Huffington Post
If Massachusetts is going to be a model for reform, we must consider both the successes and failures of the past three years. It has become painfully obvious both in our studies and clinical practice that coverage does not equal care. Despite boasting the strongest primary care workforce in the country, the newly-insured in Massachusetts report waiting months for appointments. Meanwhile, the Connector has added 4.5 percent overhead to the already crushing administrative costs of our private insurance companies.

Editorial | Berkshire Eagle
On Veterans Day, America honors those who fought in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other war zones, as well as World War I, which is passing deeper into history and is represented by only one surviving American veteran. America should also take this opportunity to assess if current veterans are being well-treated by the nation they serve, which means sending them to fight only in justifiable wars and providing them whatever health care they require. In this area, we can and must do a lot better.