Universal health-care checkup: Outreach program targets 200,000 unenrolled
By Jessica Fargen
Boston Herald Health & Medical Reporter
Sunday, July 15, 2007 - Updated: 12:14 PM EST

Two weeks after more than 200,000 Bay Staters missed a deadline to enroll in a health-insurance plan, experts warn that it’s make-or-break time for the state’s hugely ambitious program.

    “I do think we are into a critical phase,” said Stuart Altman, a nationally known health-care expert and professor at Brandeis Univerisity. “We just have to watch it. There are a variety of pieces of this we may need to tweak.”

    Under former Gov. Mitt Romney’s widely hailed plan, Massachusetts has become the only state in the country to require that all its residents have health insurance. Every uninsured person in the state was required to sign up for health insurance by July 1 - a soft deadline that carries little weight until next year. Residents who don’t sign up by Dec. 31 this year will be fined $219 in tax penalties next year, and more in 2009.

    More than 155,000 previously uninsured residents signed up by July 1, the bulk of those in the CommonwealthCare plans, which are subsidized, the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority announced last week. About 15,000 enrolled in private, nonsubsidized plans through CommonwealthChoice.

    Before the deadline, officials had estimated about 160,000 residents needed to sign up for the nonsubsidized plans for the state to reach its goal of near-universal coverage.

    However, Connector officials say enrollments are higher than expected. They credit, in part, a $3 million marketing campaign that includes ads during Red Sox [team stats] games, on MBTA buses and newspapers and street-outreach teams knocking on doors in urban neighborhoods.

    Debbie Gordon, senior director of marketing at Network Health, one of the four CommonwealthCare insurance carriers, said they’ve paid for bus ads and ads on the Spanish-language TV channel to reach people “wherever they may naturally be.”

    “We need to help inform people that they may be eligible and they will be required to get coverage,” she said.

    When Sheri Ross, 44, learned about the affordable plan, she moved back to Massachusetts from Florida.

    Ross, a disabled nurse, takes nine medications a day and was paying out of pocket for her prescriptions in Florida. In Massachusetts, she said, she works part time and doesn’t pay a monthly premium. She said she’s already hit her prescription coverage cap and gets her medications for free.

    “In Florida, I couldn’t get the health care I needed,” she said. “Even when I had the state health care down there, it didn’t cover things I needed.”

    But not everyone finds the plan as attractive as Ross does: About 217,000 Bay Staters remain unenrolled.

    “When it comes to enrolling these people, it’s literally one at a time,” said Dick Powers, spokesman for the Connector Authority.

    Grassroots efforts got a boost last week when Gov. Deval Patrick signed a budget including $3.5 million - a $500,000 boost over last year - for outreach grants to community groups.

    Teams from the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, which is made up of 65 religious organizations, have been knocking on doors this summer in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. So far, they’ve knocked on 500 doors and talked to 150 residents.

    Some, such as Roxbury resident Lorin Washington, 24, haven’t had health insurance since high school.

    He was sitting on his family’s front stoop on Wednesday night when he was approached by Alliea Groupp, who works for the Interfaith Organization.

    After a few quick questions, Groupp told him he wouldn’t have to pay any premium and urged him to call and sign up.

    He promised he would.

    Altman, the Brandeis health-care expert, said the Connector Authority should be proud of the enrollment numbers, but future success hinges on how tightly health-care costs are contained and how many healthy young people, like Washington, sign up.

    “I think that’s going to be the toughest challenge,” he said.

    jfargen@bostonherald.com

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