Insurelane Insurance Blog

A new article looks at health insurance coverage in Massachusetts, and finds “both a way forward and a warning” in how that state attempted to provide near-universal coverage to all its residents.

The article, written by Jason Szep and published by Reuters, reports that almost 105,000 of Massachusetts’ poorest residents are now enrolled in a health insurance program. That number represents roughly 25% of the number of people without health insurance when the law requiring health coverage for all residents took effect last April.

The law requires any uninsured individual living above the state poverty line to buy their own health insurance plan. Uninsured people who don’t buy a plan face a tax penalty.

After the law was passed, many other states began planning their own versions of it. California has already begun pursuing a similar law.

The law has its critics, though. Many claim that the law does not address the needs of people with incomes that put them above the poverty line, but leave them too financially strapped to comfortably afford insurance. Others point out that for some people, the tax penalty for not buying insurance can be as little as $150 — a fraction of the cost of buying insurance.

Some critics have raised doubts about using the law as a national model. Before passing the law, Massachusetts had a high percentage of residents already insured — roughly 93%. In Texas, the state with the highest percentage of uninsured residents, only 74% of people have health insurance. Massachusetts residents also have a relatively high median income: $82,561 for a family of four according to the U.S. Census Bureau, compared with a national median income of $65,093.

“It’s hard to know whether it will work as a national model in part because we don’t yet have any experience with how successful this reform plan in Massachusetts will be,” said Jennifer Tolbert, a policy analyst at the Washington-based Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured.

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