Massachusetts Healthcare

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Massachusetts has had universal healthcare since 2006, I believe. My question is how is it working for them? What are some of its benefits and drawbacks?

http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/26/smallbu ... 2009012809

the above site tells a little about how it has turned out as of january '09. the gist of it is that it is a lot better than nothing, but that there are some folks who resent being made to buy insurance at typically high premiums.

This was a plan proposed and implemented under Republican Mitt Romney. Obama's plan, as deformed by the likes of Lieberman with the help of Rahm Emanuel, is more or less an exact replica of this Republican plan. Romney is considered to be a presidential contender for the Republican nomination... yet they say that this health plan is evil, is socialist, is Nazi... ridiculous.

h.l. mencken said "i hate sports the way a person who likes sports hates common sense." - i feel the same GD'd way about POLITICS. politics stinks! if only such otherwise smart people could just put the political BS aside long enough to help the uninsured. if only more otherwise smart folk could get off their high horse long enough to acknowledge that there is at least a teensy-weensy chance that they too could sink down to poverty due to unforseen circumstance - when this particular $#!+ happens to them, you can bet they would then b***h about not having health insurance themselves! g.o.p. hypocrites!

The US is mired in corruption. No programme can be set up that does not funnel huge amounts of profits to some private interest. By the way, the whole "death panel" brouhaha was based on a Republican suggestion that made its way to the health care proposal. Obama wants "bipartisanship", you know, so he must put any Republican suggestion in it, or at least he wants his congresspeople to do this. They did, this Republican suggestion about end of life advice was put in, and they cried "death panel!". One would almost think that this was planned from the beginning - Republicans free to put whatever they want in these proposals and then cry that the proposals contain Nazi plans when in fact they put in the provisions that they interpret as being Nazi plans!

you can say that again. i give this country another decade at the most before it comes apart at the seams. i believe texas one day will secede. even my state of washington is nattering about splitting in 2 halves. people will just not get along. i wish i was born in canada or aus/NZ or europe. i never bought into the rampant individualism that is the psychological currency of this country. its present behavior [as a nation and in its politics] embarrasses me deeply. america is picky about who enters its borders and so the rest of the world has followed suit. so i'm stuck here.
so mr. or mrs. or ms. xenon [i don't know which], what country do you call home? just curious.

Canada.

Didn't they say the same thing during the Civil War period?

yes, they sure did. a house divided upon itself cannot stand. other countries have split apart who fought the way we as a nation are fighting one another now.

I live in Massachusetts. Here are my comments.

First, the Massachusetts system is nothing like the system being proposed in Washington DC right now. The Massachusetts system works on the basis of an individual mandate, rather than an employer mandate: if you work, you have to have health insurance, whether or not your employer pays for it. The flip side of this is that individual health insurance is often tax deductible (for Massachusetts taxes), whereas nationally, it's only tax deductible if provided through the employer. That gives the individual more power to make health care decisions, as opposed to the employer.

There are certain coverages that are mandated, but none that are proscribed, unlike the national proposal. In addition, the mandates are written in a way that ensure fairness while allowing a broad range of coverage levels - you can get a high end plan, or you can get a minimal plan. That's very different from how the national proposal is written.

I think the Massachusetts system works very well; the quality of health care here is excellent. I think that's in large part due to the individual mandate: with individuals making more of the health care choices rather than the employers, the health insurers and HMOs work with more of the individuals' interests in mind, rather than only with the employers' interests in mind.

The one downside is that health care here is somewhat more expensive than nationally. I do think the quality of the health care here much more than makes up for that, however.

can you say what percentage of a massachussetts citizen's income must go to healthcare before a subsidy kicks-in?
in washington state, if one earns less than $1700 a month, one qualifies [after waiting to get into a high-risk pool] for coverage with a premium range of $200 down to $34 a month for somebody who earns minimum wage or less. those who are not on the program [washington state basic health] generally are priced-out of private health coverage [even the most basic group health plan which covers only emergencies] unless they make at least $50k per annum for a single, or $100k as a family- the cheapest non-subsidized catastrophic plans at group health here are pushing $500 per month for the average middle-aged single person. where i live folk are lucky to have a minimum-wage job, so there's no way any of us could afford to get sick. of course there are sham plans which charge a bit less but cover nothing in reality- covering a portion of emergency surgery but no other medical supplies or meds or therapies, leading to a lifetime of crushing debt or to bankrupcy.

And that makes no sense at all when you consider that by mandating everyone participate, it should bring down prices because you aren't covering for as many uninsured people.

Let me guess, insurance is still a "for profit" enterprise, right?

I figure you can drop costs by mandating nobody be excluded and everyone must be placed in a common risk pool. It would raise prices for people in excellent health, but ensure a stable price curve because it averages out with the healthy and sick (which can be interchangeable over time for the individual) rather than benefit the healthy who then get shafted once they develop a problem.

The U.S. has been mired in corruption since 1775. We will manage to go on, corruption and all. The real world does not work on honesty. It works on expedience and convenience.

ruveyn

I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I do know it's not based on a percentage. There's an income cutoff below which one qualifies for a subsidy. I think it's in the range of $20k a year.

I'd also note that I've seen MacDonald's ads for new workers with a starting wage of $8/hr here, so there are not a lot of people in Massachusetts earning only minimum wage.



It makes a lot of sense when you consider how many things are required to be covered under Massachusetts law. For example, infertility treatment up to and including IVF has to be covered, which is not the case in the vast majority of states. More coverage costs more money, even with the efficiencies of universal care.

It does sound like health insurance is less expensive here, even with the additional coverage, than what auntblabby describes in Washington state. $500/month will get a top notch group plan for an individual here - a friend of mine is paying about that amount per person for the top rated HMO in the country (Harvard Pilgrim), and that's about what my insurance costs my wife's employer for our Blue Cross / Blue Shield plan, which is a pretty high end non-HMO plan. The minimal plans are much less than that. So maybe it's just that I've noticed the increases in recent years in Massachusetts, but just didn't realize how much it had increased elsewhere in the country.

Sounds like a liberal screw up of the Oregon Plan.

Oregon found a way to insure everyone, but they had to set limits of what was and was not covered. They rated things based on threat to one's life and treatability.

A good example is that they'd do a mastectomy for breast cancer, but not reconstructive surgery. A woman can live without a breast, but not with cancer.

Some might not approve, but those who came up with the plan acknowledged from day one that there wasn't the funding to pay for everything for everyone.

I presume Massachusetts did the exact opposite...tried to give everything to everyone.