Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Mass. Effort in Good Health on 1st Birthday, Pt.6 -- The break-down and summary.

Previous…

A leading herald of health insurance and care policy is called the journal Health Affairs. They have “recently outlined the success and challenges of the effort,” as per USA Today’s Julie Appleby. Health Affairs reports that there are now, about 355,000 of Massachusetts’ residents who, formerly, had no health insurance but who now do have it. This is a very large number of people and it would be interesting to find out how they became insured in such a short time. Massachusetts’ data from January indicate the current break-down of who these new health insurance enrollees are. It turns out that:

• 37% have been deemed eligible for free state-subsidized health insurance.
• 17% have been admitted into the new expanded Medicaid program.
• 14% are paying for part of the health insurance coverage themselves.
•    7% of those newly covered paid for it, themselves, instead of requiring government subsidies.
•  25% enrolled in employer-based health insurance through their employer.

In response to the main criticism, that is ‘cost control’, the Massachusetts Legislature is working a bill aimed at greater efficiency. According to Mr. Kingsdale, one of the key elements of the bill is through medical IT. Medical records are to be made available and handled electronically. In summary, we reflect on the words of Cambridge Hospital’s chief of emergency medicine, Assaad Sayah. He speaks of Massachusetts’ ‘heroic commitment’ of the project and concludes with “"Is it perfect? No. I'm not sure any system in the world is perfect. But it's better than what we had before."