A cover story in the March 2010 issue of Workforce Management focuses on the effects of Massachusetts health reform on low-wage workers — particularly home health care workers.
The story confirms PHI’s findings that these workers are finding it difficult to afford employer-based coverage.
Passed in 2006, the Massachusetts health reform law requires all state residents to obtain health insurance. Full-time employees must enroll in their employers’ health plans, while residents earning less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level are eligible for state subsidies to purchase insurance.
As a result of health reform, nearly 98 percent of Massachusetts residents are insured, making it the state that has come closest to universal coverage.
Home Care Workers Face Difficulties
However, Massachusetts residents pay some of the highest premiums in the country. According to the PHI report Coverage for Caregivers: Lessons from Massachusetts Health Reform (pdf), home health care workers face especially high insurance premiums because they tend to be older, female, and prone to injury.
Mirlene Desrosiers, a Haitian-born home health care worker, knows first-hand just how expensive health care can be in Massachusetts.
The Workforce Management story describes Desrosiers’ struggle to maintain her insurance. She must pay a $287 premium each week, more than half of her $500 weekly gross income.
Desrosiers works 120 hours each week at four different health care agencies just to afford the basic necessities of rent, food, and health insurance.
‘Perverse Employment Outcomes’
One of the “perverse employment outcomes” of Massachusetts health reform is that some workers are willingly cutting their hours so they won’t be obligated to purchase insurance from their employers, according to PHI Government Affairs Director Carol Regan, who is quoted in the article.
“These disincentives to work are problematic in the home health care industry,” Regan said. “It’s a fast-growing industry. How do you get enough people to work there?”
Massachusetts’ experience with health reform should provide a valuable lesson to federal policymakers as they work on finalizing national health reform, the Workforce Management article concludes.
– by Matthew Ozga
