Maine’s voluntary health care program — seemingly like Massachusetts, without the mandates — has signed up a mere 18,000 people, some of whom already had coverage:
PORTLAND, Me., April 23 – When Maine became the first state in years to enact a law intended to provide universal health care, one of its goals was to cover the estimated 130,000 residents who had no insurance by 2009, starting with 31,000 of them by the end of 2005, the program’s first year.
So far, it has not come close to that goal. Only 18,800 people have signed up for the state’s coverage and many of them already had insurance.
Their program also has a controversial funding mechanism, and the bad old problem of “adverse selection”: sick people want in, healthy ones don’t.
And of this, Matthew Holt of The Health Care Blog says bluntly, “Local Health Reform Doesn’t Work.” I hope he’s wrong.
Well, here in Massachusetts, today is the first day that the new health insurance products are available to get people to comply with our personal mandate to carry insurance. The personal mandate’s a heck of a lot less incremental and “nice” than Maine, but it is meant to tackle the problem of adverse selection.
As far as I know, we’re having trouble getting people to sign up for the state’s subsidized care; I wonder if all the publicity in the world can get folks to sign up for care, since we’re still asking people to pay with money they likely just don’t have. There are real questions about whether these high-deductible plans are worth it for folks, even though much preventative care has been included.
UPDATE: For those who need to sign up for health coverage, you can go to … the website for the state program is macommonwealthcare.com. Phone # 1-877-MA-ENROLL (877-623-6765 — note the “877”!) And you can always call Health Care for All, which provides free consultation on navigating state health care systems: online, or 800-272-4232.
I am one of those with no health insurance that has been hesitant to sign up with the state. Why? Because it’s not clear how to sign up, with whom, what is offered, how much it is… the list goes on.
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Honestly, they could do better to get the information out to those that need it. I’ve gone to the mass.gov site looking for a clear link with concise information on the plan and so far it has been lacking. Sure there are links, but all I’ve seen are links that discuss everything around the issue and not the specifics of signing up. Maybe there is a link out there and I’m just not finding it, but after wasting my time on statistical and coming soon links, I give up.
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Also, I keep hearing that the heathcare reform bill needs to be voted on. Does this mean that we may sign up and then won’t be covered because the bill will go down in defeat?
They consult jes’ folks on how to navigate state health care systems: 800-272-4232 or click here for an online form. It’s free.
… the website for the state program is macommonwealthcare.com. Phone # 1-877-MA-ENROLL (877-623-6765 — note the “877”!)
No, healthcare reform was passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor last year. What you may have heard about are the various implementation issues that the Connector Authority has been addressing, such as minimum coverage, prescription coverage, costs, etc.
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If you have any questions about your own eligibility or coverage, I suggest you call Health Care For All’s help line: 1-800-272-4232. They are the experts on the issue and if they don’t know they answer, they can at least point you in the right direction.
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It shouldn’t take a non-profit to guide us through the State’s health care system, but I’m glad the resource is there.
Adverse selection has always been and will always BE a problem. By creating the employer mandate and individual mandate, as two sides of the same coin, Mass. has ensured maximum participation, or at worst, subsidy fo the Free Care pool by those too pig-headed to sign up for insurance by taking their tax refunds until they hit the legal threshhold.
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Romney was wrong to veto the employer mandate, and activists are wrong to fight the individual mandate. It is only by having both that this system can work.
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Full Disclosure: I am, and have always been since the days I designed health plans,a big fan of severing the artificial relationship between employment and health insurance, but favor allowing people to choose their own company and coverage. Does your boss tell you you have to insure your car with Arbella with a $100 deductible?
you say “It is only by having both that this system can work.”
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Hello? Is anybody (that includes you, PP) paying attention to the alarming facts that describe our HC spending, quality and access?
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An expensive bureaucracy-heavy mandate forcing the purchase of private insurance, even if the mandate falls on both individuals and employers as this law does, will not make our fragmented, wasteful and largely dysfunctional system work much better at all. It is a tragic missed opportunity that we can turn around if we put the effort into doing so.
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The good people of Maine are doing the same up north.
The marketing-related implementation problems with the Massachusetts “universal access” health insurance laws are beginning to come apparent just as the new Commonwealth Choice health insurance market proposals are becoming available today.
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One substantial problem the Massachusetts Health Connector Board has encountered is that all of the private health insurance compaines, offering the subsidized, “affordable” “Commonwealth Care” health insurance products continue to balk at fulfilling the mandatory state data demographic reporting requirements contained in the law, according to Paul Leo, who spoke at the MassINC. health care reform Real Talk forum last Thursday in Boston. According to Mr. Leo, the insurance companies offering these “Commonwealth Care” health insurance products claim that such information contains “proprietary competitive market” data that would leave them at a competitive disadvantage with other insurance companies that might use this information to about the income-level of Commonwealth Choice subscribers, the frequency, scope, and total utilization costs of health care services ascribed to Commonwealth Choice customers, and other demographic data the law mandates these companies turn over to the state.
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One suspects that, at least, some of the health insurance companies are refusing to turn over this critical demongraphic data to the state Commonwealth Connector Board for a more nefarious reason. Specifically, the health insurance companies have a powerful economic incentive to concentrate their marketing and sign-up efforts on the healthiest, youngest, and most financially stable of their potential uninsured customers and leave the sickest, oldest, and most financially precarious MA residents for the MassHealth program to pick-up. This practice is known in health insurance circles as “creaming” (marketing and signing up the insurance subscribers least likely to utilize the health insurance services provided and making it more difficult for riskier potential health insurance subscribers to purchase your product), and it is particularly prevalent, when in this case, the insurance companies are forecasting earning a modest profit of between 2-5% on their respective Commonwealth Choice plans.
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Following the forum, Mr. Leo assured me that Health Connector Board has some of the finest and toughest lawyers in the state and would not back down on the data reporting requirments that the insurance companies should be fulfilling. Nevertheless, if one has ever tried to fight an insurance company in or out of court, one has become acutely aware that insurance company lawyers are masterful at exploiting possible loopholes in an insurance policy and state law and regulations and/or finding, at least, one of the more than a handful of corporate-friendly, hack state judges in MA who are eager to issue a legal ruling that forecloses the operation of a fair, balanced, and open operation of the insurance industry in Massachusetts. Never bet against the power of the private insurance industry in Massachusetts to protect successfully its own narrow economic self-interest against the consumer interests of their less powerful subscribers, even when the latter are supported by “the best and brightest” state lawyers AG Martha Coakley can find.
Do this up into a user post, and I’ll promote it.
navigation of the collosal and ever evolving scams. Health care “products” indeed. I direct you all to the mighty search engine Google and the keywords United Health Care+RICO suit. In a half hour you will see a seven year court battle waged over a company whose primary players should be residents of Gitmo.
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If governemt can’t do anything about an obviously scamming health care company they have absolutely no business telling me I have to participate.