Supporters of the Obama health care reforms, which are modeled after the Massachusetts system, suffered a major setback on Tuesday.
A Harvard Medical School study released to the media found that the percentage of personal bankruptcies related to medical bills changed very little in Massachusetts from early 2007 to mid-2009. The idea that health care reform would substantially reduce the number of medical-related bankruptcies was a big selling point for Obama during the 2009-10 health care debate.
More importantly, the new study found that the 2006 Massachusetts law did not slow down increases in health care costs but it did encourage people to sign up for health insurance plans that are full of holes.
Massachusetts’ law features a mandate that nearly everyone must be insured – much like the Obama system. But the unintended consequences of the mandate are rising to the surface in Massachusetts and, according to Physicians for a National Health Program, the president’s offer to let state’s opt out and run their own program may make matters worse.
“Health costs in the state have risen sharply since reform was enacted,” the study concluded. “Even before the changes in health care laws, most medical bankruptcies in Massachusetts – as in other states – afflicted middle-class families with health insurance. High premium costs and gaps in coverage – co-payments, deductibles and uncovered services – often left insured families liable for substantial out-of-pocket costs. None of that changed.
“For example, under Massachusetts’ reform, the least expensive individual coverage available to a 56-year-old Bostonian carries a premium of $5,616, a deductible of $2,000, and covers only 80 percent of the next $15,000 in costs for covered services.”
The study’s lead author, Dr. David Himmelstein, summed it up this way: “Massachusetts’ health reform, like the national law modeled after it, takes many of the uninsured and makes them underinsured, typically giving them a skimpy, defective private policy that’s like an umbrella that melts in the rain — the protection’s not there when you need it.”
That’s a pretty devastating critique for those of us who thought the Obama plan would finally provide universal coverage in an affordable manner.
