Gov. Deval Patrick is bullish about the 2006 health care access law, the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act and a 2012 state law to control cost increases. <\/p>\n
In a Huffington Post op-edMonday, Patrick, a Democrat finishing his second term and considered a potential national office seeker, unsurprisingly focused on the upsides of Massachusetts experiments with health care reform without addressing some of the more recent, gloomier developments. Patrick described Massachusetts as the first state to achieve universal health care, the model for the ACA. And he ticked off other achievements in a piece targeted for a national audience and intended by the governor to let people know how Obamacares prototype has been doing. <\/p>\n
Patrick wrote that the insurance expansion added only 1 percent of spending to the state budget, that unemployment in Massachusetts has remained lower than the national average and economic growth higher, that more private companies are offering insurance to employees than ever before, that virtually every resident is insured, and that average base rate increases are less than 2 percent today after rising more than 16 percent three years ago. <\/p>\n
As the ACA is implemented this month, the entire country will begin to enjoy the benefits that we have seen from health care reform here in Massachusetts, and much more, Patrick wrote. <\/p>\n
The governor did not mention some of the other storylines that have been playing out in Massachusetts. <\/p>\n
Small businesses fearful of sharp health insurance rate hikes remain opposed to ratings factors being forced upon states under Obamacare. At the direction of the Democrat-controlled Legislature, Patrick sought a waiver from the ratings rules, but the Obama administration rejected it, allowing a three-year phase-in period instead. One major business group said it was mulling legal action. <\/p>\n
As the state and nation crawled out of the Great Recession, Patrick administration officials maintained a faster and stronger mantra to distinguish growth in Massachusetts from other states, a narrative that has since been abandoned following mixed economic reports and data showing the state growing more slowly compared to the nation from April through June after a strong first quarter. <\/p>\n
Last week, economists who are part of the University of Massachusetts Benchmarks project reported, After coming out of the recession more quickly than the nation, in recent months the Massachusetts economy has been growing sluggishly. The state unemployment rate has been rising even as the national rate has been falling. <\/p>\n
The state unemployment rate held steady at 7.2 percent in August, a hair below the nation's 7.3 percent unemployment rate. The government shutdown prevented the release of an updated national rateon Friday. A year ago August, the national jobless rate was 8.1 percent and the Massachusetts rate was 6.8 percent. <\/p>\n
The state Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) reported in August that based on 2011 data, 97 percent of Massachusetts residents were insured, with nearly 200,000 uninsured. Massachusetts has consistently registered a high insured rate, a fact that policymakers say has made insurance expansion efforts more achievable and the job of keeping together a broad coalition behind reform more doable. <\/p>\n
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The rest is here: <\/p>\n
Patrick's health care narrative skips over some blemishes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gov. Deval Patrick is bullish about the 2006 health care access law, the 2010 federal Affordable Care Act and a 2012 state law to control cost increases Continue reading