{"id":576544,"date":"2026-04-10T20:02:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T20:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/576544\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T20:02:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T20:02:13","slug":"20-years-after-passing-nation-leading-health-care-law-mass-braces-for-new-challenges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/576544\/","title":{"rendered":"20 years after passing nation-leading health care law, Mass. braces for new challenges"},"content":{"rendered":"

In early 2006, roughly 530,000 Massachusetts residents did not have health insurance<\/a>. Most of these adults and children did not have a regular doctor. Many waited until they were very sick before seeking medical care. A fund that covered emergency room and other costs for the uninsured had ballooned to $1 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That year, state\u00a0legislators passed a landmark law designed to fix those problems by providing near-universal health coverage for residents. Twenty years later, Massachusetts has among the lowest uninsured rates<\/a> in the country. Its Health Care Reform Act inspired<\/a> the sweeping federal overhaul known as the Affordable Care Act. And many are wondering whether that period of negotiations and compromise can offer lessons for solving urgent health care challenges at a time of intense political polarization.<\/p>\n

The 2006 law was the product of an unlikely coalition of elected officials, business, hospital and religious leaders, and insurers, forged in response to political, financial and moral pressures.<\/p>\n

The federal government had threatened to stop paying its share of the $1 billion bill for uninsured care from hospitals and health care centers.<\/p>\n

The Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation had issued a series of reports<\/a> modeling options for expanded health insurance coverage and invited top lawmakers to speak at summits attended by hundreds of health care leaders.<\/p>\n

Consumer advocates and religious leaders added to the pressure with a ballot question that demanded action to cover the uninsured.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom all across this commonwealth, we will rise up, take health care reform to the polls, but hold you accountable,\u201d said Rev. Hurmon Hamilton, then-president of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, in an address to lawmakers in early 2006.<\/p>\n

On April 12 of that year, after months of tense bargaining and stalemates, the governor at the time, Mitt Romney, a Republican, sat on a stage at Faneuil Hall, flanked by the late Democratic U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy and the state\u2019s top Democratic leaders, and signed a set of precedent-setting health care reforms into law.<\/p>\n

The new law made health insurance mandatory for individuals, fined some employers who didn\u2019t provide it and created subsidized health plans for low- to moderate-income residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really a lifesaver,\u201d Madelyn Rhenisch told WBUR in 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She\u2019d gone without health insurance for a decade before the law passed, and became the first Massachusetts resident<\/a> to buy one of the new subsidized plans. At the time, Rhenisch received a routine physical and discovered the chronic fatigue syndrome she\u2019d battled for years was actually Lyme disease. Her insurance covered the cost of treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thrilled the law came along,\u201d said Rhenisch\u00a0on the 10th anniversary of the law’s passage.\u00a0\u201cI can\u2019t imagine life without it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Studies show access to health insurance improved residents\u2019 sense of health and wellbeing<\/a>, reduced preventable hospital visits<\/a> and led to 320 fewer deaths<\/a> a year. Some have argued the law didn’t go far enough toward creating a system of universal health care and has not contained health care spending<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiving health insurance to people makes them much better off,\u201d said Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health care research group. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t necessarily lower the overall cost of health care. When you give people health insurance, they use more health care, not less.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2006 law had promised affordable health care but largely punted changes that might curb costs. Tracy DeJesus of Boston felt the impact in 2010 when her then 2-year-old was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. DeJesus stopped at a pharmacy to pick up her child\u2019s new medications. They cost $250 even though DeJesus had health insurance through the dental office where she worked.<\/p>\n

DeJesus looked at her budget, the demands of monitoring a toddler\u2019s blood sugar, the expected medical costs and made a calculated, but difficult, decision: She quit her job, left her apartment and moved into a shelter in Chelsea.<\/p>\n

“I realized that I couldn\u2019t keep up the home plus the medical insurance and expenses,” DeJesus told WBUR in 2012<\/a>. “I just couldn\u2019t afford both.”<\/p>\n

The mother and daughter switched from private insurance to MassHealth, the state\u2019s Medicaid program, as lawmakers drafted a law designed to slow the growth of health care spending. It\u00a0established a goal: Health care spending should not rise any faster than the economy overall. It didn\u2019t<\/a>, on average, through 2018.<\/p>\n

But in more recent years, the state has failed to meet its targets. In 2023, the benchmark was 3.6% while health care spending increased 8.6%<\/a>. In 2024, the most recent year with data available, the 5.7% rise was more moderate<\/a> but still strained individual, company and government budgets.<\/p>\n

Health care leaders have cited increases in people taking GLP-1 drugs for weight loss and diabetes, more costly procedures and increasing labor and other costs among the reasons for rising spending.<\/p>\n

Massachusetts also faces new federal pressures. The Healey administration expects to lose $3.5 billion in federal health care funding every year<\/a> once Medicaid cuts approved by the Republican-led Congress are fully in effect in 2028. Roughly 250,000 residents are expected to lose health coverage because of new Medicaid work requirements. One recent report<\/a> by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation shows a larger percentage of Medicaid recipients are at risk of losing coverage in Massachusetts than in any other state.<\/p>\n

That grim prediction has demoralized many in Massachusetts’ health care sector who do not want to see insurance coverage rates slide backward. Some are asking, as they mark this anniversary, whether the state\u2019s elected, business, health care, consumer and religious leaders come together again to tackle pressing health care threats.<\/p>\n

Several key figures, including Romney, will attend an event Monday marking the 20th anniversary of the Massachusetts health coverage law. Former Senate President Robert Travaglini and former House Speaker Sal DiMasi, who held office when the law was implemented, will also be in attendance, as well as former Gov. Deval Patrick and Gov. Maura Healey.<\/p>\n

Editor’s note: The event will be moderated by WBUR\u2019s Martha Bebinger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In early 2006, roughly 530,000 Massachusetts residents did not have health insurance. Most of these adults and children…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":576545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":["post-576544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/576545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}