Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Mass Success, Pt.5 -- How does it all work?

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As stated earlier, this new Massachusetts plan went into law and took effect last year. A requirement was placed on their residents that they needed to obtain health insurance beginning in 2007. Massachusetts created state subsidies and provided for the low-income sector by using a “sliding scale”. The intent was to make health insurance affordable to all. In the first year 86,000 residents did not comply. For last year they were penalized with a $219 tax. For those still uninsured this year, these penalties will be higher. For the first year of the test, Mr. Kingsdale reported that over 350,000 residents without health insurance had, by the end, become insured. This figure was well over half of the estimated total figure of 600,000 who were listed as having no health insurance at the beginning of the program. There were exemptions made for some 60,000 residents who were found to still not even be able to afford even the subsidized coverage. Since the new plan has been received so well, the original projections have been exceeded. To cover the added expense, Massachusetts Governor, Deval Patrick and the legislature are arranging an increased tax on tobacco. They believe this will allow the program to sustain.

Of those left, still without health insurance, many were young, healthy adult males with low incomes. A third of them didn’t even know it was mandatory. The Urban Institute has tabulated in their survey that 7% of the working-age sector (aged 16 to 64) were still uninsured. But this figure is way down from the 13% it was at the beginning of the plan in 2006. Another important uninsured segment studied was a new standard that was what was considered to be an important category. That segment was an enlargement of the current lower level of income class of families of incomes having less than twice the national poverty level, which is $20,000 per year. Notice the category used here three times the national poverty level, or less than $60,000 per year. This group dropped from 24% uninsured to only 13% still without health insurance. Those with incomes higher than that still dropped from 5% to 3%. Of this lower-income group, 70% reported receiving preventive care during the testing period. Before that period in 2006, only 65% said they had. From the same group, only 49% reported receiving dental care before the test period, whereas 59% reported dental care after the test. That same group, again reported that 27% of them had deferred needed medical care before the plan began. After the year-long test, that percentage dropped to only 17%.