Massachusetts Health Reform

摘要

As the 2008 Presidential campaign season progresses, health reform has become firmly placed on the agendas of candidates of both parties. As platforms of national health care access are developed and refined, state-based health reform efforts, begun long before declarations of current candidacies, proliferate and move beyond enactment and toward full implementation. Massachusetts is one state with an established state-based solution to what is considered by many to be the federal problem of expanding access to health care for the uninsured and underinsured. As the federal government has debated and implemented proposals and policies aimed at constricting and shrinking the federal contribution to the Medicaid program, states have been confronted with a growing crisis in uninsurance, of varying degrees and in varying forms. Expanding access to health care is but one of the commonly accepted goals of health reform; however, access presented an achievable goal as the policy window opened for sweeping health reform in Massachusetts in late 2004.