Health Care Reform Is Working In Massachusetts

Study Finds That Business, Government, and Individuals Are Sharing
Responsibility of Paying for Expenses Related to Massachusetts Health Care
Reform
BOSTON--(Business Wire)--
A new report from the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation finds
that the overall distribution of spending on health insurance by employers,
individuals, and government remained essentially the same between 2005, one year
before passage of Massachusetts health reform, and 2007, one year after
lawmakers passed the Massachusetts health care reform law. A critical component
of the Massachusetts 2006 health reform statute was that the responsibility of
paying for expanded access to health insurance be shared among the three groups.

"Shared Responsibility, Government, Business, and Individuals: Who Pays What for
Health Reform?" is the first assessment of how the spending to insure hundreds
of thousands of additional people under the Massachusetts health reform law is
being shared. Researchers Robert Seifert, M.P.A., and Paul Swoboda, M.S., of the
Center for Health Law and Economics, University of Massachusetts Medical School,
compared spending on health insurance in 2005, before implementation of health
care reform in Massachusetts with spending on insurance in 2007, one year after
the law`s passage.

"The costs of health reform are being shared and no one group is contributing a
greater share to coverage than they were before reform," said Seifert. "This is
important information to have as the state grapples with ways to sustain the law
in the face of increasing health care costs."

In 2007, employers and union health plans accounted for lightly less than half
of the total spending on health insurance in Massachusetts; government accounted
for approximately 30 percent; and individuals accounted for about a quarter. In
2005, the breakdown of spending was the same, which means that the policy goal
set forth in Chapter 58 that each sector paying for health insurance in
Massachusetts continue to share the responsibility is being met.

"This report is yet another measure of health reform`s success," said Jarrett T.
Barrios, President of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation,
which funded the report. "When this law was passed, there was a promise that
employers, government, and individuals would share the expenses of expanded
access to care, and that`s what`s happened."

The report also finds that the policy goal of paying for coverage while reducing
spending on the uninsured - a crucial underpinning of federal support for the
law in the form of a Medicaid waiver - is being met. From 2005 to 2007, spending
on health services for the uninsured in Massachusetts fell by 40 percent, from
$1.8 billion to $1.1 billion.

The full report is available at www.bcbsmafoundation.org.

More about the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts

The mission of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation is to
expand access to health care. Through grants and policy initiatives, the
Foundation works with public and private organizations to broaden health
coverage and reduce barriers to care. It focuses on developing measurable and
sustainable solutions that benefit uninsured, vulnerable and low-income
individuals and families in the Commonwealth, and served as a catalyst for the
pioneering Massachusetts health care reform law passed in 2006. The Foundation
was founded in 2001 with an initial endowment of $55 million from Blue Cross
Blue Shield of Massachusetts. The Foundation operates separately from the
company and is governed by its own 18-member Board of Directors. It is one of
the largest private health philanthropies in New England and in 2007 was awarded
the Paul Ylvisaker Award for Public Policy Engagement by the Council on
Foundations.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts
Susan Ryan-Vollmar, 617-246-2404
susan.ryanvollmar@bcbsma.com

Copyright Business Wire 2009