One of the best analyses of what's going on in Massachusetts vis a vis so-called healthcare reform came out of the Statehouse News Service (SNS) on December 13. This SNS article explains how Massachusetts state government spending on Romneycare is crippling other state expenditure line items such as aid to higher education, aid to towns and cities including for K-12 education, and so forth.
But what caught my eye was the article's statistical factoid that there are almost 1.3 million people enrolled in Medicaid in Massachusetts, almost 20% of the state population. I was confused because the Massachusetts Department of Healthcare Finance and Policy (DHCFP) quarterly Key Indicators report (see page 4) implies that the number is between 800,000-900,000. But Mike Norton of SNS sent me a link to his source document. Read it and weep.
The difference between the two state departments' official numbers is apparently in the fine print (isn't everything?):
"MassHealth enrollment (in the DHCFP page 4 graph I guess they mean) does not include members with partial coverage or premium assistance; they are counted in the private plans. These members include Seniors, MassHealth Limited, individuals with third party liability (e.g., disabled with Medicare), and Family Assistance/Insurance Partnership." It would be interesting to know how much the total Massachusetts Medicaid population grew under Romneycare applying the SNS source's approach to the page 4 graph in the DHCFP's report. And how much the "private" category in the DHCFP report grew -- or most likely contracted given that the state's official "private" number is not that private (that is, that according to the fine print, it includes Medicaid enrollees). As I say elsewhere "statistics don't lie but statisticians do." You might argue that my headline is an example of that in that I believe the number of people actually taking real money out of their pockets to buy insurance under Romneycare is falling like a rock, down over 50,000 in just a few years. I came up with my statistic by adding the Private Group and Individual Purchase line items from page 4 of the DHCFP report and starting the count on December 1, 2008 when the actual meaningful penalty of Romneycare kicked in (before that, was the mandate really a mandate if it only cost a scofflaw $219 for the year?). But given what the SNS reporters dug up, maybe my headline is accurate even if I go back to June 30, 2006.
-- Dennis Byron