Obama’s health care reform proposals similiar to Mass. health care system, Mass. has potential to go

Massachusetts’ health care system, though unique in its widely available public option, practices many elements of President Barack Obama’s proposed health care reform and could be nationally applicable, the Network Health president said in a lecture Wednesday afternoon.

President Christina Severin presented the lecture in the Boston University Medical Campus Instructional Building to an audience of about 30 primarily School of Public Health graduate students and professors. Although the presentation was somewhat rushed due to time constraints, it prompted much discussion among audience members about the national and local health care debate.

Severin, who graduated from BU in 1995 with a master’s in Public Health, now serves as the president of Network Health, a non-profit organization which provides health care coverage to more than 150,000 low- and moderate- income Massachusetts residents. Her mission in speaking at BU was to help the audience ‘understand the successes in terms of expanding coverage and access to the lower-income population, especially considering the current economic situation.’

Elements of the Massachusetts health care reforms overlap with President Obama’s plan for the nation in several aspects. Medicaid expansion, subsidies for low-income families and individuals, comprehensive coverage, employer ‘pay or play’ and individual mandates are features that appear in both plans. According to Severin, the goal of the state’s plan is to cover people first, and address rising costs second.

Severin primarily discussed the recent reforms in the Massachusetts health care system, emphasizing that 97.4 percent of Massachusetts residents have health insurance, with the 2.6 percent uninsured rate being the lowest in the country.

Despite this, Severin still recognized several flaws in the health care system, including higher uninsured rates among minorities and a lack of access to care for those in the lowest income brackets. She concedes that the current recession has caused a major cost crisis in the health care industry, leaving 26 percent of the population of Massachusetts to admit to foregoing necessary health care due to high costs.

Severin also pointed out that according to numerous studies, cost and quality are not directly related when it comes to health care. Although Massachusetts has one of the highest health care budgets in the nation, the system’s quality rankings come in slightly above average as compared to other states.

One audience member, SPH professor Leonard Glart, recognized the strength of the presentation, which utilized statistics fromthe Department of Health Care Finance and Policy, while questioning the effectiveness of the system.

‘[The presentation] seems to be an incredibly convincing argument for a single-payer system, considering the level of complexity of the current system,’ he said. ‘[Severin] supplied us with excellent data, but there needs to me more analysis of what to do about it.’ ‘

‘If you’re not confused, you’re not paying attention,’ Severin said. ‘No one’s talking about single-payer health care anymore. It’s dead on arrival . . . There really does need to be a public option.’

Despite the flaws still evident, Severin has confidence in the success and potential of the system.

‘There are lots of great things about the health care system in Massachusetts,’ she said. ‘If there weren’t, it wouldn’t be being talked about as a national model. That fact exemplifies the profundity of our successes.’