Almost one year after Massachusetts implemented a plan for universal health care, the Urban Institute has released a report examining its progress.  The report states that the level of uninsurance has dropped from 13% to 7% and that the level of care patients received has also improved. 

With National Health IT Week underway, receiving support from many Congressional lawmakers including Senator Kennedy and Congressman Murphy, an article from the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation was released highlighting the CMS launch of a $150 million Medicare pilot program which encourages the use of electronic health records.

 A recent article from the New York Times discusses the impact of Massachusetts' new take on health insurance, making it mandatory for the state's residents.  For over a year now those residing in Massachusetts have been required to obtain health insurance, making it the largest state to implement mandatory insurance and strive for universal coverage.  The program, which began in 2007, has since significantly reduced the number of uninsured adults with more than 350,000 of the 600,000 uninsured residents gaining coverage.  In addition, the state is also providing subsidies on a sliding scale for low-income residents in order to assure more affordable health insurance.  However, 60,000 exemptions were made to those residents who exhibited the inability to pay even subsidized insurance.

A study released Tuesday, May 27, 2008 in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that Medicare spending does not affect the perception of quality of medical care received.  While healthcare costs continue to rise across the nation, regional Medicare expenditures differ in excess of $6,000 a year per beneficiary between some areas in the U.S.  However, despite these differences the study did not report a positive correlation between spending and satisfaction as evidenced by a 10-question survey.  "In areas that spend a lot of money and provide intensive care there's no consistent evidence that patients benefit.  Nor do patients in low-cost areas feel deprived," says Jonathan Skinner, co-author of the study and an economist.   

 Learn more about this study.