Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Mass. Medical Model Shines, Pt.1 – Grades still looking good.

As the Boston Globe announced, Massachusetts’ landmark health insurance/care model has done it again. Kay Lazar has written a fine article and posted it on the “Globe’s” www.boston.com/news/local/articles/ web site. In it, she announces that the program has now achieved the notable record of enrolling three quarters of their residents who formerly had no health insurance coverage. The report was issued yesterday by the administration of Governor Deval Patrick. Co-founded by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the monumental initiative was launched back in June of 2006. At that time, it was estimated that there were about 600,000 residents in the state with no health insurance.

They worked long and hard to do something about it. Their ultimate goal was to enroll every resident in the Bay State in a health insurance plan of some kind. Their aggressive approach was probably the most radical project taken on by any state in recent memory. Now, only two years later they have come most of the way. They already realized it would be impossible to enroll 100% for various unconventional reasons, such as religious conflicts. But they wanted to get as close as they could get. At this point they have finally reached the 439,000 mark (This doesn’t include Medicare). Of course the main criticism was that all these people were probably freeloaders just looking for a ‘freebee’. But that proved not to be the case. Like so many other critical myths the program has dispelled, it was found that almost half of those did not require taxpayer funding and were willing and able to pay for it themselves. They now have their own private health insurance policies.

Continued…