Comments on: Health Reform Winners and Losers by David Himmelstein, MD

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 23:50:58 +0000

You can see further down on this site where other people–other professionals–have also included URLs to the sites of viable alternative movements in the health care debate with which they agree (and have even worked to grow). They’re all white papers–this is an opinions page. He includes the URL of Physicians for a National Health Program in that same spirit of public citizenry; whether he co-founded it is beside the point.

By: Brian Rosman

Brian Rosman — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 21:49:09 +0000

The blog entry spreads dangerous misinformation.

First, legal immigrants, even legal immigrants ineligible for MassHealth, are eligible for Commonwealth Care. This was one of the unnoticed victories of health reform. The 3-year fight with the Romney administration – which cut state-funded coverage for low-income adult legal immigrants who don’t qualify for MassHealth — was settled when chapter 58 gave legal immigrants full Commonwealth Care eligibility.

Legal immigrant children, by the way, never lost coverage; they’re ineligible for Commonwealth Care because they’ve always been eligible for MassHealth; undocumented kids can get CMSP which covers primary care and is free for those below 200% of fpl, and sliding scale above that. So kids are not losers in any way. They gained – the law expanded MassHealth from 200% to 300% of poverty.

Second, to write about “the end of the Free Care Pool” is simply false. For undocumented immigrants, the Pool is not going away. Health reform budget projections assume continued Pool eligibility for undocumented immigrants and others with no other source of coverage. The Pool will also continue to cover copayments and deductibles for low-income underinsured.

State policymakers and the public will have a debate this summer over whether or not the Pool should restrict coverage for people who are eligible for Commonwealth Care or employer coverage, and the coverage is affordable to them, but they turn it down.

But we do not see any responsible policymaker advocating positions that would put safety net institutions in deep trouble, as the post suggests.

One other error: “the phase-out of hospital contributions to the Pool” is not in chapter 58, and was not contemplated by anybody.

People can responsibly disagree about the health reform statute, but the debate must be grounded in the facts.

By: gee

gee — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 17:59:49 +0000

To me, this is a poor post that is merely an advertisement for the author’s organization. At the end of an otherwise good analysis, Prof. Himmelstein casually dismisses the whole topic and calls national health insurance the “only real solution”. Rather than explaining why he believes that, he merely links to the front page of an organization that lobbies for it.

I haven’t seen any other contributor to this great blog do that, including those who share Himmelstein’s opinions. Whenever a writer links to another web page, it is a link to a specific report or paper that supports what the writer is saying, and usually it links to a third-party’s site.