There were at least a couple of positive news items relating to health care reform today. At the top of that list, I would put a new study released today by The Milbank Quarterly, which found significant improvements in health status in Massachusetts following health care reform implementation. The Massachusetts experience illustrates the potential of the federal health care reform to achieve similar gains in other states, although the rocky rollout of the online application process may slow that progress.
The new study is the first to examine the effects on health outcomes of the Massachusetts health care reform law – sometimes referred to as “RomneyCare” – which served as the model for the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA). The Massachusetts law passed in 2006, and researchers found that insurance coverage improved within just one year, and personal doctor visits were up within two years.
The study published today shows that by 2011 the health of Massachusetts citizens was significantly improved, especially among those below 300% of the poverty level who were able to gain health insurance after the law’s enactment. The findings are based on a comprehensive analysis of health status measures in Massachusetts and other New England states before and after 2006. The primary data came from telephone surveys during 2001 through 2011 that asked 345,211 New Englanders questions about their health status and their use of and access to health care services. The authors found that compared to other states in the region, Massachusetts had greater improvement in a series of measures of general health, physical health, and mental health, as well as prevention measures such as Pap screening, colonoscopy, and cholesterol testing. In addition, Massachusetts citizens were more likely to have a personal doctor and more likely to report that healthcare costs were not a barrier to treatment.
“Our results demonstrate the potential benefits of health care reform in Massachusetts that may also be achieved through the implementation of the federal Affordable Care Act,” says author John Z. Ayanian, formerly of Harvard Medical School and now director of the University of Michigan Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation.
Read more in this University of Michigan press release.
Jon Peacock