Survey pegs Mass. insured rate at just over 96 percent
Years after passage of universal health care access and price control laws, about 3.7 percent of Massachusetts residents still lack insurance and health care costs continue to serve as an impediment to those needing treatment and care.
The Center for Health Information and Analysis (CHIA) reported Tuesday that 96.3 percent of respondents to its 2014 health insurance survey had coverage while fewer than one in 20 did not and 1.6 percent of respondents said they were uninsured for all of the past 12 months.
The state's insured rate compared to an 87.3 percent coverage rate for the United States, based on estimates from the National Health Interview Survey for January through June 2014, according to CHIA.
The report identified costs as a "significant barrier" to care in Massachusetts, where more than one in four respondents reported an unmet health care need due to costs over the past 12 months. One in five said they had difficulty paying family medical bills, with those conditions more common among adults in low-income families, the uninsured and "those with poor health with an activity limitation."
A third of Massachusetts respondents reported that members of their family were trying to stay healthier as an approach to lowering family health care costs and one in four reported that someone in the family had switched to a lower cost health insurance plan.
The Massachusetts uninsured rate was 3.1 percent in 2011 and 2012 and 1.9 percent in 2010, but a CHIA spokesman said comparisons to prior survey results "aren't one-to-one" because of efforts to improve the survey methodology.
The spokesman, Andrew Jackmauh, said in an email that the uninsured rate change from 2011 to 2014 is "statistically insignificant" and within the range state officials expected it to fall "so it is not possible to determine whether this change is due to improvements in survey design or due to underlying changes in health insurance coverage, health care access, or health care affordability."
Gov. Mitt Romney in 2006 signed universal health care legislation that made insurance mandatory, set up a state insurance exchange, and pulled more people onto publicly subsidized plans. In 2012, Gov. Deval Patrick signed a law to slow increases in health care prices, which in Massachusetts are among the highest in the nation.
The CHIA survey was in the field between May 14 and July 30, 2014 and 4,024 households completed surveys.
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