We had just posted our blog item about the U.S. Census numbers and the worrisome erosion of private insurance and were ducking out for a nice health-minded salad and a bit of fresh air and sunshine, when one more thought occurred to us.... Some of the decrease in the number of uninsured is from Massachusetts. In fact, using very round numbers, more than a fourth of it is. (Massachusetts has insured 439,000 people - roughly 370,00 by the end of 2007, the time covered by the Census). So if we went from 47 million uninsured, to 45.7 million uninsured, a total decrease of 1.3 million, and 370,000 were from the Bay State... Maybe we can conclude that the state's health reform initiative, despite its cost challenges, is doing what it set out to do?

We then checked whether the Boston Globe's White Coat Notes blog had chimed in, and sure enough, it reported that Massachusetts now has the lowest percentage of residents without health insurance in the nation, according to the Census data.

Averaging data from 2006 and 2007, the study found that 7.9 percent of Bay Staters did not have health insurance. From 2004 through 2005, the rate was 10.3 percent.

By comparison, one-quarter of residents lacked health insurance in Texas, the state that fared worst. Nationally, about 15 percent of Americans were uninsured in the 2006-07 period.

 

 

 

 

The Globe blog pointed out the reform‘s impact is probablay understated in the Census because aspects of it didn't go into effect until late 2007.

Jon Cohn over at The New Republican also had his Massachusetts moment...