Claim: Massachusetts lawmakers weigh ‘Medicare for all’ bill.
Verdict: SUPPORTS

Retrieved passages:
title: Massachusetts health care reform
text: to operate an expanded Medicaid program. Under the existing waiver, the state was receiving $385 million in federal funds to reimburse hospitals for services provided to the uninsured. The free care pool had to be restructured so that individuals, rather than institutions, received the funding. Then-U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) made a special effort to broker a compromise between the Republican Governor and the Democratic State Legislature. In Fall 2005, the House and Senate each passed health care insurance reform bills. The legislature made a number of changes to Governor Romney's original proposal, including expanding MassHealth (Medicaid and SCHIP) coverage

title: Massachusetts health care reform
text: Care Today) Coalition introduced a bill that expanded MassHealth (Medicaid and SCHIP) coverage and increased health coverage subsidy programs and required employers to either provide coverage or pay an assessment to the state. The coalition began gathering signatures to place their proposal on the ballot in November 2006 if the legislature did not enact comprehensive health care reform, resulting in the collection of over 75,000 signatures on the MassACT ballot proposal. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation sponsored a study, "Roadmap to Coverage," to expand coverage to everyone in the Commonwealth. Attention focused on the House when then-Massachusetts House Speaker

title: Single-payer healthcare
text: Health Care for All Illinois Act was introduced and the Illinois House of Representatives' Health Availability Access Committee passed the single-payer bill favorably out of committee by an 8–4 vote. The legislation was eventually referred back to the House rules committee and not taken up again during that session. Massachusetts had passed a universal healthcare program in 1986, but budget constraints and partisan control of the legislature resulted in its repeal before the legislation could be enacted. Question 4, a nonbinding referendum, was on the ballot in 14 state districts in November 2010, asking voters, "[S]hall the representative from this

title: Massachusetts health care reform
text: the need for this fund. In 2006, MIT economics professor Jonathan Gruber predicted that the amount of money in the "free care pool" would be sufficient to pay for reform legislation without requiring additional funding or taxes. In November 2004, political leaders began advocating major reforms of the Massachusetts health care insurance system to expand coverage. First, the Senate President Robert Travaglini called for a plan to reduce the number of uninsured by half. A few days later, Governor Romney announced that he would propose a plan to cover virtually all the uninsured. At the same time, the ACT (Affordable

title: Healthcare disparity in Massachusetts
text: out-of-pocket cost. Even once they had seen a primary physician, 15.4% reported not seeing a specialist due to out-of-pocket cost. In 2006, Massachusetts passed an expansive health care reform bill. The law had three key components aimed at combating healthcare inequality - mandating that every citizen has a minimum level of insurance coverage, providing free health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% of the federal poverty level and mandating employers with more than 10 "full-time" employees to provide healthcare insurance. Healthcare disparity in Massachusetts Healthcare disparity in Massachusetts refers to the issues in access to, and treatment of,

title: Salvatore DiMasi
text: law. In April 2006, Governor Mitt Romney signed the first-in-the-nation universal health insurance bill into law. As a result of the law, Massachusetts reduced the number of uninsured adults by nearly half within the first year of mandatory health coverage and increased the percentage of people receiving routine preventive care, according to the first major study of the 2006 law conducted by the Urban Institute. In 2007, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick submitted a bill that would allow the construction and operation of three resort-style casinos in the state. He argued that these casinos would generate $2 billion for the state

title: Bundled payment
text: method in Massachusetts. As of 2010, provisions for bundled payments are included in both the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Affordable Health Care for America Act. The former bill establishes a national Medicare pilot program starting in 2013 with possible expansion in 2016, which is consistent with the Obama proposal. The latter bill requires "a plan to reform Medicare payments for post-acute services, including bundled payments." 450 healthcare organizations participated in the Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) initiative held by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The program tested the ability of bundling payments for

title: Massachusetts health care reform
text: to offer free, highly subsidized and full-price private insurance plans to residents, including through its web site. As such it is one of the models of the Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges. The 2006 Massachusetts law successfully covered approximately two-thirds of the state's then-uninsured residents, half via federal-government-paid-for Medicaid expansion (administered by MassHealth) and half via the Connector's free and subsidized network-tiered health care insurance for those not eligible for expanded Medicaid. Relatively few Massachusetts residents used the Connector to buy full-priced insurance. The healthcare insurance reform law was enacted as Chapter 58 of the Acts of 2006 of

title: Massachusetts health care reform
text: Salvatore DiMasi, speaking at a Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation Roadmap To Coverage forum in October 2005, pledged to pass a bill through the House by the end of the session. At the forum, the Foundation issued a series of reports on reform options, all of which included an individual mandate. At the end of the month, the Joint Committee on Health Care Financing approved a reform proposal crafted by House Speaker DiMasi, Committee co-chair Patricia Walrath, and other House members. The state faced pressure from the federal government to make changes to the federal waiver that allows the state

title: Massachusetts health care reform
text: country faced unpaid bills and mounting expenses to care for the uninsured. In Massachusetts, a pool of over $1 billion in 2004/2005, funded by a tax on paying hospital customers and insurance premiums, known as the Uncompensated Care Pool (or "free care pool"), was used to partially reimburse hospitals and health centers for these ED expenses. A much larger portion of the pool was used for non-ED hospital care for the uninsured and for other care at Community Health Centers. It was predicted that implementation of the 2006 Massachusetts healthcare insurance reform law would result in almost complete elimination of

title: Massachusetts health care reform
text: to low-income children and restoring funding for public health programs. The most controversial change was the addition of a provision which requires firms with 11 or more workers that do not provide "fair and reasonable" health coverage to their workers to pay an annual penalty. This contribution, initially $295 annually per worker, is intended to equalize the free care pool charges imposed on employers who do and do not cover their workers. On April 12, 2006, Governor Romney signed the health legislation. He vetoed eight sections of the health care legislation, including the controversial employer assessment. He vetoed provisions providing

title: Political positions of Mitt Romney
text: that he was "willing to vote for things that [he was] not wild with". As governor of Massachusetts in 2006, Romney proposed and signed into law a private, market-based reform that ensures every Massachusetts citizen will have health insurance, without a government takeover and without raising taxes. The law secured near-universal health care coverage. The legislation requires health insurance for all state residents, provided a plan is available to the individual that deemed affordable according to state standards. Employers with eleven or more employees are mandated to offer approved insurance plans for employees. Romney vetoed eight sections of the legislation,

title: Political positions of Mitt Romney
text: for the governorship of Massachusetts in 2002, Romney argued that the federal government should pay for medicines for seniors: "It is outrageous that some senior citizens are forced to choose between paying for their prescription drugs and their groceries. The federal government needs to step in with a plan for our senior citizens, and I will lobby officials on the federal level to provide a Medicare drug benefit." (The U.S. Congress would pass legislation providing for Medicare prescription drug coverage - Medicare Part D - the following year.) In February 2012, in an address to the Detroit Economic Club during

title: Bernard Lown
text: of the Cambridge City Hospital; Jerry Avorn, head of Pharmacoepidemiology at the Harvard Medical School; and Susan Bennett, a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital formed the Ad Hoc Committee to Defend Healthcare. Many health workers joined the Ad Hoc Committee, the objective of which was to promote a single-payer healthcare system in Massachusetts In 1997, a letter signed by over 2000 Massachusetts physicians outlined the need for single-payer healthcare. The letter was published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The Ad Hoc Committee canvassed people through the state of Massachusetts to gain the 100,000 names necessary

title: Massachusetts health care reform
text: dental benefits to poor residents on the Medicaid program, and providing health coverage to senior and disabled legal immigrants not eligible for federal Medicaid. The legislature promptly overrode six of the eight gubernatorial section vetoes, on May 4, 2006, and by mid-June 2006 had overridden the remaining two. The enacted statute, Chapter 58 of the Acts of 2006, established a system to require individuals, with a few exceptions, to obtain health insurance. Chapter 58 had several key provisions: the creation of the Health Connector; the establishment of the subsidized Commonwealth Care Health Insurance Program; the employer Fair Share Contribution and

title: Healthcare disparity in Massachusetts
text: an emergency department visit. Health equity has two parts - unhealthy populations, and access to healthcare once those populations fall ill. Lower-income families oftentimes cannot pay the out-of-pocket costs associated with healthcare in Massachusetts. Under former Governor Mitt Romney, Massachusetts passed comprehensive healthcare reform intended to cover nearly all of its residents. Massachusetts health care reform successfully covered approximately two-thirds of then-uninsured residents, but significant barriers to access of health care still exist. The primary factor affecting access to healthcare is out-of-pocket cost. In a 2010 study, 34.5% of respondents reported that they had difficulty obtaining care due to the

title: History of health care reform in the United States
text: already in short supply in Massachusetts. Other states, while not attempting to insure all of their residents, cover large numbers of people by reimbursing hospitals and other health care providers using what is generally characterized as a charity care scheme; New Jersey is an example of a state that employs the latter strategy. Several single payer referendums have been proposed at the state level, but so far all have failed to pass: California in 1994, Massachusetts in 2000, and Oregon in 2002. The state legislature of California twice passed SB 840, The Health Care for All Californians Act, a single-payer

title: Governorship of Mitt Romney
text: restructure state government or remake state programs. On such an emergency timetable, there's just time for cuts." He also proposed cuts in state expenditures for Medicaid, the government program providing health care for the poorest state residents. The cuts included caps in payments to medical providers (one example being through limiting payments for hospital stays to 20 days, no matter how sick the patient), increased stringency of the criteria for Medicaid eligibility, and rationing of access to higher-priced medications for Medicaid patients. Some 36,000 Massachusetts residents lost their Medicaid eligibility. The 2003 emergency budget revision proposal also included funding cuts

title: Medicare for All Caucus
text: Medicare for All Caucus The Medicare for All Caucus is a congressional caucus in the United States House of Representatives, consisting of members that advocate for the implementation of a single-payer healthcare system. It was announced by progressive members of the House of Representatives. It has over 70 founding members. Arizona California District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Illinois Indiana Kentucky Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Missouri Nevada New Jersey New York Ohio Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island Tennessee Texas Vermont Virginia Washington Wisconsin Colorado Jared Polis, "elected governor of Colorado" Minnesota Keith Ellison, "elected attorney general of Minnesota" Rick Nolan, "retired"

title: Medicare for All Caucus
text: Medicare for All Caucus The Medicare for All Caucus is a congressional caucus in the United States House of Representatives, consisting of members that advocate for the implementation of a single-payer healthcare system. It was announced by progressive members of the House of Representatives. It has over 70 founding members. Arizona California District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Illinois Indiana Kentucky Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Missouri Nevada New Jersey New York Ohio Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island Tennessee Texas Vermont Virginia Washington Wisconsin Colorado Jared Polis, "elected governor of Colorado" Minnesota Keith Ellison, "elected attorney general of Minnesota" Rick Nolan, "retired"