Mass., Vermont Pioneer Their Own Health Reforms
Efforts in Massachusetts and Vermont offer insight regarding cost controls and a state initiative to create a single-payer system.
Stateline: After Expanding Coverage, Health Care Pioneer Seeks to Tame Costs
Seven years after its groundbreaking health reforms, which became the model for the Affordable Care Act, Massachusetts boasts an uninsured rate of less than 2 percent, compared to a national average of 16 percent. But the cost of health care in the state, the highest in the country before the reform law was passed, remains so. Nationwide, health care costs per person are higher in the U.S. than in any other country in the world (Vestal, 4/9).
WBUR CommonHealth: New England Journal Of Medicine: Lessons From Vermont's Single-Payer Plan
We devote a great many pixels to Massachusetts health reform, but of course it's really Vermont that's attempting the boldest state-level experiment, with its push toward a single-payer system. So how's it going? Very nicely indeed, according to a piece just out in the New England Journal of Medicine titled Lessons from Vermont's Health Care Reform (Goldberg, 4/8).