On March 23, a year after President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), "the most expansive social legislation enacted in decades," according to the New York Times, it's worth taking a look at Massachusetts.
After all, PPACA was inspired in the Massachusetts health plan, which sought universal coverage through Medicaid expansions for individuals living under 150 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), partial subsidies for those between 151 and 300 percent of the FPL, a state-based exchange to act as a one stop-shopping place of private insurance plans, and a mandate to purchase one of those plans under penalty of a fine.
And yet, four years after implementation, health reform Massachusetts-style has failed a critical test. As a recent study in the American Journal of Medicine showed, the percentage of personal bankruptcies linked to medical bills and illness, at 52.9 percent, has not decreased significantly, and the absolute number of medical bankruptcies has increased, from 7,504 in 2007 to 10,093 in 2009. How so?
Well, it's not hard to understand why. Health insurance is a means to an end. The end is health care. And skimpy policies with significant, and increasing, out-of-pocket costs are useless when people need care.
And in Massachusetts, skimpy policies are not even cheap. For example, as study authors pointed out, the least expensive individual coverage available to a 56-year-old Bostonian carries a premium of $5,616 and a deductible of $2,000, and covers only 80 percent of the next $15,000 in costs of covered services (uncovered services fall 100 percent on you).
This is not small change if your annual income is around $32,000, or 300 percent of the FPL, so you're not entitled to subsidies (which, mind you, come from taxpayers' pockets).
But what about at least slowing the increase in health care costs? Fail again. Double-digit increases in premiums have become routine in Massachusetts, and insurers have warned this will continue next year, even as "consumer-driven" policies that shift more costs to individuals multiply.
But would PPACA, a federal program, not control costs of U.S. health care? No, at least if you go by its effect on California, where, maybe to celebrate PPACA's first year anniversary, Blue Shield recently announced its third premium hike since October 2010. An outside consultant found, unsurprisingly, that the planned hike was "reasonable." (PPACA does not forbid insurers to raise their prices; it only demands that they show that increases are deemed "reasonable" by authorities that have little power to enforce their standards of reasonableness anyway.")
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
