Employers and Massachusetts Health Care Reform

The Center for Study of Health System Change published a brief report today suggesting that the lack of progress on lowering health care inflation combined with greater availability of both subsidized and nonsubsidized individual insurance has lessened employer commitment to continuing to offer health insurance, especially to low wage workers. This is in contrast to information published last week in Health Affairs, where a survey by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) showed that there was little "crowd out" of employer health insurance by the new state program.

If employer-based health insurance declines, it will be hard to tell whether this is due to the state Connector program or due to the severe decline of financial fortunes in many Massachusetts industries, especially the financial services industry.

For readers in HPM 235, we'll be talking about health care reform on Wednesday, November 5 (and slides are posted at the end of class 2)