Under Massachusetts state law, passed in 2006, most residents are required to have health insurance, and state-subsidized plans are provided for the poor. According to the report, the state has the lowest uninsured rates in the country at 2.6 percent.
The study found that an increased demand for care was confronting a decreased supply of willing physicians. One in five adults said they had been told in the last 12 months that a doctor or clinic was not accepting new patients or would not see patients with their type of insurance, according to the report. Low-income adults, who had benefited the most from the state’s law, and those with public insurance had double the rejection rates of higher-income residents and those with private coverage.
These rejection rates could explain the finding that emergency room use for non-emergency treatment remained unchanged. According to the report, 23 percent of low-income residents said their last trip to the emergency room was for a non-emergency condition.
A Massachusetts state commission has proposed that providers be paid for an individual’s on-going care rather than for each office visit or procedure, providing an incentive to keep patients healthy.
The authors of the study said that the issues in Massachusetts should be viewed as lessons for Washington, D.C., where much of the Massachusetts model has been incorporated into federal healthcare legislation, according to the report.
Read the Times’ report about the Massachusetts near-universal healthcare study.
