Massachusetts Makes Strides in Expanding Health-Insurance Coverage

By Dena Rifkin, MD

I have to give a gold star to my home state this week. Massachusetts just announced an impressive increase in the number of residents with health insurance. Since the June 2006 launch of a program aimed to extend health-care coverage to every resident, more than 400,000 people have joined the ranks of the insured. You can read about the ongoing health-care reform efforts at the official state site or in the Wall Street Journal’s health blog.

There is continuing debate about how the financial side of this will work out, and it’s clear that everyone is watching Massachusetts to see how this experiment goes. One fact stood out to me in the reports though: The Boston Globe says that visits by the uninsured to community health centers and hospitals dropped by 37% from July 2007 to September 2007 compared with the same time period the year before. Read More