I have been very fortunate to practice general internal medicine in Ipswich, Massachusetts for the past 27 years. I have listened to the insured and the uninsured worry about the cost of their healthcare, the price of co-pays, drugs, deductibles, tests, and the annual increases in their health insurance premiums that seem to have no end. Lack of insurance has been viewed as a roadblock to healthcare. Many of the uninsured are unable to receive preventive care and immunizations proven to have benefit or to purchase prescription medicines for hypertension, diabetes, or many of the other chronic medical conditions that there are effective treatments for.
I applaud the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for recognizing that the lack of affordable health insurance is a deterrent to health care services and has taken the first step at correcting this with passage of Chapter 58. Unfortunately, it gives people access to the same health care system that is accused of being too costly, to have variable quality, be inefficient, unfriendly, and inaccessible. Read more…

Recent days have brought more good news for health care in the Commonwealth and those who are fighting in the trenches to ensure the success of our landmark reform legislation – which seeks to provide nothing less than health care for nearly every man, woman and child – should take a brief but well-deserved bow.

As Administration and Finance Secretary Leslie Kirwan noted in her blog entry last week, the approval by the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority of so-called affordability standards will help us achieve the goal of the individual mandate. Read more…

We have just marked the one-year anniversary of health reform and there is certainly a lot to celebrate. Over 63,000 low-and-moderate income individuals now have health insurance through Commonwealth Care. For many of these folks, including many that we’ve spoken with at Network Health, it’s the first time they’ve had health insurance in many, many years (we recently spoke with a 28-year-old woman who hadn’t seen a doctor in over 10 years), and they are tremendously excited about having meaningful coverage and about the opportunity to access needed care. Jon Kingsdale and the Connector Board continue to have the astuteness to recognize that health reform is an iterative process, and they are wise to not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good as they work toward our collective long-term goals of a fully insured Commonwealth. Read more…

Last Thursday was a very good day for health care reform. The Connector Authority Board met and in an unusually (for Massachusetts) amicable session, resolved three tough issues that have threatened to derail the train moving toward implementation of Ch. 58. The Board voted to loosen the purse strings a bit to help out the people at the lower end of the income scale. They agreed on an affordability schedule that will exempt from the individual mandate, people whose premiums would probably be too high for them to handle, and they agreed to be flexible in granting individual cases of hardship. The advocates congratulated the board members for listening and responding. The board members praised the staff for their prodigious and successful work. The Chair thanked the board members for their perseverance and patience in achieving a compromise that everyone could accept. It was a rare Massachusetts moment and 99% of the uninsured should be able to get insurance as a result. Read more…

We want to post a few stories every week about your direct experience with the health care law. Are you:

1) enrolled in Commonwealth Care?
2) uninsured, and worried about buying health insurance?
3) a business owner working on changes required by the law?
4) a doctor seeing some newly insured patients?
5) someone trying to persuade people to buy coverage?

Email your stories to: marthab@bu.edu. We’ll give preference to:

1) unique perspectives
2) thoughtful questions
3) writers who are new to the site

Yesterday was an important day for health care reform in Massachusetts. On the first birthday of our historic health reform law, the Board of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority (which I am privileged to Chair) unanimously approved a draft proposal to implement one of the centerpieces of our efforts to expand health insurance coverage: the “individual mandate” requiring all adults who can afford health insurance to have it. If you view health care reform as having three legs – employer responsibility, government responsibility, and individual responsibility – our vote was about putting that third leg in place. In doing so, the Board has set the stage for covering virtually everyone in the Commonwealth with health insurance that meets the highest standard in the nation. Read more…

A few days ago, the debate about how much of their income uninsured residents will have to pay for required coverage was an exchange of shouts and threats. Today, it looks like the Connector board will get unanimous approval on a compromise plan. W-B-U-R’s Martha Bebinger has some details and insights into how they bridged the divide. Read more…

This is a summary and some details of the staff proposal for determining who can afford to buy, and will be required to buy, health insurance in Massachusetts. The Connector board is scheduled to review this proposal tomorrow. It is a little dense…so here are a few of the key elements: Read more…

An unprecedented ideological divide over Massachusetts health reform congealed one year ago.

On the political left, a cleavage emerged between those who thought Chapter 58 the worst thing imaginable, a sheep in wolf’s clothing to speed up the demise of employer sponsored coverage and to promote consumer driven policies – an argument advanced by the AFL-CIO (state and national), single payer advocates and others.

Others on the left – the ACT Coalition, Families USA and others – suggested Chapter 58 represented a noteworthy and promising advance, risky and unprecedented, and worth pushing as far as possible.

On the political right, a similar split. One side, represented by the Cato Institute, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, Sally Satel and others attack Chapter 58 as a wolf in sheep’s clothing for single payer, an advance for government controlled health care, and a whole lot worse.

The other part of the right, represented by the Heritage Foundation, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney (until recently), sees a lot to like, finds merit in individual responsibility, and is open to seeing how it can go. Read more…

BOSTON, Mass. – April 10, 2007 – Debate about what is affordable health insurance is heating up as The Connector gets ready to vote on the question this Thursday. The “Affordable Care Today” coalition, representing health care, religious and community organizations, sent a compromise offer yesterday and is hitting the airwaves with ads today.

Also today, a coalition of health insurance and business groups is delivering a letter defining its stance to the Governor. WBUR’s Martha Bebinger delves into what the opposing parties call the “make-or-break” issue for the state’s universal health care law. Read more…