Opinion: The Failure of Transparency to Contain Health Care Costs in Massachusetts
Photo: masscare.org
The following statement by Professor Gerald Friedman was issued by Mass-Care: the Massachusetts Campaign for Single Payer Health Care
In 2012, the Massachusetts Great and General Court established the Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) with the responsibility of collecting information on health care in the Commonwealth to improve health care quality and contain health care costs through transparency, efficiency, and innovation.
In particular, CHIA was to use its data collection and publicity to pressure health care providers and insurers to bring down the rate of growth in health care spending in the Commonwealth, limiting further growth in per capita spending to the rate of growth in per capita state income, or about 1.7%.
By its own measure, CHIA has failed.
In its most recent report, it finds that total health care expenditures rose by nearly 6%, double the growth in state income. This is consistent with the trend since CHIA was established. Over its life, health care expenditures exceeded CHIA’s benchmark in five of the last six years, the only exception being the COVID year 2020.
40 % of Massachusetts households report that they found it difficult to afford health care and were forced to forgo needed care.
The failure of transparency to contain health care costs has led to a crisis of affordability for Massachusetts households. More and more of the cost of health care is being borne directly by households with rising premiums on health insurance and increasing cost-sharing through deductibles and co-pays. As a result, over 40% of Massachusetts households report that they found it difficult to afford health care and were forced to forgo needed care.
We can only expect more of the same unless the Great and General Court accepts the need to take aggressive action to deal with what has become a crisis of affordability in the Commonwealth’s health care system. We know the problem, and we know the solution: An Act Establishing Medicare for All in Massachusetts.
Gerald Friedman is Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts. His most recent book, The Case for Medicare for All, appeared in March 2020 with Polity Press.
Mass-Care’s mission isto establish a single payer health care system in Massachusetts so that all residents of the Commonwealth will have access to comprehensive, quality, affordable, and equitable health care, publicly financed and free of out-of-pocket cost at point-of-care, because it is basic to life and human dignity. The Mass-Care Coalition is now 102 organizations. www.masscare.org / 617-297-8011 / info@masscare.org