Massachusetts Health Stats

Good News/Bad News: ObamaCare Exchanges Worse Than RomneyCare Exchange

In a surprising admission of bad news (behind the Boston Globe paywall on May 20), the Boston Globe reports that Obamacare's federally run state exchanges will be even worse than the RomneyCare exchange that has existed here in Massachusetts for the last few years.  Hopefully there is some good news in that comparison for President Obama -- he needs some this week -- and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). If the comparision holds up, Obama will be happy to learn that very few people in Massachusetts actually use the RomneyCare exchange to buy health care insurance.  

As the first illustration above shows, only around 40,000 people -- much less than 1% of Massachusetts' 6,500,000 residents -- are covered by insurance bought through the political-hack-ridden Massachusetts Connector Authority, which basically duplicates Massachusetts political-hack-ridden Medicaid organization. The 30 or so states that decided not to implement their own hack-ridden PPACA-related authority are saving themselves tens of millions of dollars. 

The membership in insurance bought on the RomneyCare exchange has plateaued at the 40,000 number more or less since after the initial marketing. Most of the membership involves individually purchased insurance.  There have been multiple failed attempts to involve small businesses. Discretion being the better part of valor, Obama has decided to forgo an attempt to involve small businesses in the federally run exchanges in other states.

As the second illustration¹ shows, most of those insured by policies bought on the RomneyCare exchange are choosing the highest deductible policies possible. Their idea is to simply do the minimum mandated by RomneyCare to avoid the RomneyCare tax.

¹ Subscriber numbers differ from membership numbers because some subscribers insure spouses or other family members on their policies. YAP refers to a high deductible plan for young adults that apparently do not want to be insured on their parents' policies any more than they want to live in their parents' basements.

RomneyCare Drives Up Healthcare Usage Claims Boston University Professor

A story has been floating around third- and fourth-string web sites during the week of May 10 that claims -- depending on who wrote the headline -- that healthcare and/or hospital costs didn't go up and/or went down in Massachusetts under RomneyCare.  Here is an example from a web site called ScienceDaily.  

I was waiting for some name-brand web site to pick up the story because I could not find the source of the "news" on the third- and fourth-string web sites, I could not find a link to allow me to read the research itself, and I could not even find a web site that even described the research's findings other than to garble the headline as noted above.

None of this information is yet appearing in the real world but at least ScienceDaily did describe the findings.  I think I now know why no namebrand web site is repeating the thought that healthcare and/or hospital costs didn't go up and/or went down under RomneyCare. Despite the fact that ScienceDaily repeated the headline, the article itself says that some BU professor said:

• "The total days of inpatient care increased by 0.94 percent in Massachusetts, compared to 0.80 percent in the comparison states.
• "Hospital charges per quarter increased by 1.1 percent more in Massachusetts than in the comparison states.
• "Hospital use increased among previously high uninsured groups -- the number of hospitalizations increased by 2.8 percent among blacks and by 4.5 percent among Hispanics."

So apparently -- despite headlines and lead sentences that say that healthcare and/or hospital costs didn't go up and/or went down under RomneyCare, they in fact did go up.  That explains why the name-brand press isn't running with the story.

In reality, no one would seem to care.  The effect of RomneyCare on hospital admissions were never an issue.  A dramatic decrease in ER usage and cost control is what Governor Romney promised.  RomneyCare failed totally in both as well as in all the other promises noted in the Novemeber 2004 Romney op-ed to which I linked. 

RomneyCare did not cure baldness nor cause the sun to rise in the west either.

 

 

Neither Left Nor Right Cares Whether Employer Sponsored Insurance Is Up or Down Under RomneyCare

As of May 14, many publications and news services are picking up on a highly promoted Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC) study called "Masschusetts Essentials," which claims -- among other things -- that employer sponsored insurance (ESI) is/was up in Massachusetts post the passage of RomneyCare in 2006.

I commented on this yesterday and noted that the state of Massachusetts disagrees. Just for the record, the state's numbers are illustrated above and are quite different.

The difference seems to be totally methodological. PWC uses Census Bureau numbers that are based on a much larger sample but that are not mututally exclusive. That is a person can have no insurance, ESI, Medicare and what Massachusetts calls "public or other" insurance all in the same year. Many people have Medicare and ESI or Medicare and Medicaid at the same time. The state numbers are a snapshot in time but based on a much smaller sample using a biased methodology.

All of this matters a lot if you are a big proponent or opponent of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better know as Obamacare.  For the rest of us, what's the big deal: both conservatives and liberals want to get rid of ESI anyways.

Did Employer Sponsored Insurance Rebound in Massachusetts in 2011?

One of the major questions in understanding likely healthcare-insurance marketplace dynamics nationwide under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), better known as Obamacare, is:

"What happened in Massachusetts under RomneyCare?" 

Here -- from the Census bureau -- is a 2001-to-2011 snapshot of total Massachusetts population, those on employer sponsored insurance (ESI), those on government insurance and those uninsured.  (I left out the even-numbered years to keep the chart readable. these numbers gyrate wildly so this trend line is not consistent with the 10 years ending in 2010).

Oregon Medicaid Study Fires Up Both Far Left and Far Right over Nothing

The Oregon Medicaid Study is the topic throughout healthcare-statistics Twitterland. My reading of the posts about this final version of the study tell me my opinion of the study itself (should I again beg the lead author to send me a copy of the report that I otherwise would have to pay for) will be the same as my opinion when the first stage version results were released two years ago:

"I think what the (Oregon Medicaid study report authors) found is that a bunch of intelligent Oregonians who wanted free medical care and proactively sought to win a lottery in order to get it, then took advantage of the free medical care. Did the (authors) really need to spend $30 million – much of it Federal money from the Stimulus bill and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) -- to find this out? I'd have rather seen the money spent on public health outreach. 

"But thanks, Oregon.  It looks like a bunch of guys here in Massachusetts (the authors were from Harvard and MIT) got the $30 million while you got a few percent of your (already sick) low income population to go to the doctors..."

These results mirror dozens of studies of RomneyCare results in Massachusetts but are considered better research because the Oregon groups were sort of partially -- depending on your political view -- randomized and sort of, maybe -- depending on your political point of view -- large enough to be statistically significant.  

Tufts Health Plan Executive Runs Massachusetts Medicaid Art Gallery, Medicaid Marching Band

What a tour de force of political correctness Massachusetts’ Medicaid insurer, Network Health, must be. Its Human Resources vice president just spoke – probably on the Massachusetts’ taxpayer’s dime -- about cultural diversity at a swank hotel on the Potomac in Maryland south of DC.

The head of the group promoting the apparently taxpayer-funded boondoggle claimed:

“The expansion of Medicaid in many states under the (Patiient Protection and) Affordable Care Act will mean that health plans will not only need to serve a more diverse population but also have workforces in place that reflect such diversity.”

Health Affairs Blog Hits Trifecta of Left-Wing Absurdity on RomneyCare

On April 17, the far-left-wing faux-academic Health Affairs blog posted an analysis of recent research-for-hire concerning Massachusetts' healthcare insurance exchange. Apparently it was intended as part of the calvacade of celebratory posts and articles about RomneyCare in honor of RomneyCare's 7th birthday. But no one told Health Affairs that the celebration was called off this year because the Massachusetts legislature effectively repealed RomneyCare in 2012. 

Despicable Huffington Post Article Lies about RomneyCare

This Huffington Post article about the Boston Marathon terrorist attack and Massachusetts' so-called healthcare reform is both ignorant and insulting. It is ignorant about RomneyCare and Romneycare's relation to Obamacare. It is also a further victimization of those injured and killed by the Boston terrorists because the article attempts to make some political points using a tragedy.

(Clearly, Huffington Post -- in its left wing zeal -- follows the Obama rule of not letting a tragedy goes to waste when it can be used in politics. I mean Obama lied about his mother's terminal illness for chrissake so nothing his acolytes in the press do will ever be that despicable.)

The premise of this Huffington Post article is

• If a terrorist-bombing victim -- from Massachusetts or otherwise -- doesn't have insurance, the RomneyCare "Health Safety Net" will cover him or her
• Obamacare is great because it is based on RomneyCare

That is totally ignorant for two reasons.

Did Law-Enforcement Protocols or Massachusetts Politics Delay Marathon-Bomber Captures

Just to be a bit contrarian this morning, it looks to me that law-enforcement protocols or Massachusetts politics or both delayed the Boston-marathon-bomber captures by at least 24 hours.  And put an alleged million people in an unneeded "lock-down." And maybe cost an MIT law enforcement officer his life.

According to news reports, there was supposed to be a "big announcement" on Wednesday, possibly as early as Noon Wednesday. Various news outlets said Wednesday that they had seen pictures of the bombers but were not going to describe the pictures (or release other related data) until law enforcement said it was OK to do so.  Instead it was 5:00 pm Thursday before the pictures were released.

Two hours after their pictures were released, the bad guys started to run.  Would it have been better for everyone involved had they started to run 24-36 hours earier?

And was the "other related data" the name of Suspect 2?  After all, if the law-enforcement folks had his picture on Wednesday morning ahead of the "big announcement" that didn't happen on Wednesday, they also must have made the link to Suspect #2's Massachusetts driver's license.

And then when Suspect #2 got away... injured... on foot..., the politicians made everyone in Belmont, Boston, Cambridge, Newton, Waltham and Watertown stay inside for 12 hours (which -- as I understand it -- very few people really did, going to the beach or the mall instead of work). During that 12 hours, over a thousand law enforcement personnel  searched house to house..., block to block, etc. and found nothing. 

Apparently the government in Massachusetts -- which has lived by its sea roots for four centuries -- didn't think to search boat to boat. As soon as the politicians ended the lockdown, an old guy with a hunch, who had been looking out his window all day at his boat, grabbed a step ladder from the shed, pulled back his winter cover and found the bad guy. Anyone else thinking that maybe if the pols had let the people out of their houses 12 hours earlier, this thing would have been all over before first shift.

(And oh by the way, what's the story with the guy they showed on TV Friday morning being frog marched down a Watertown street in his birthday suit? There's no mention of him Saturday morning.)

Births Down, "Free" Babies Rise Rapidly in Massachusetts

It's a good thing women and girls are having fewer kids in Massachusetts.  Because taxpayers are paying for more and more of their births.  

In absolute numbers, according to the state's Department of Public Health