Good radio journalism paints pictures in your mind. NPR has gone one step further, and is producing videos along with their radio reports.
Click here to see today’s report, written by long-time health reporter Dick Knox and John Poole, evaluating health reform in Massachusetts (NPR won’t let us embed the video, it appears).
The report includes people having difficulty with Commonwealth Care copays. Copays increased substantially on July 1, and we worry that many low-income CommCare members will cut back on valuable medications and office visits because of the increases. Even many employer-based plans are dropping copays for vital preventive care to encourage patients to use cost-effective services. The plans are finding that costs go down, even though they’re not collecting copays. This effect has to be stronger for low-income people on CommCare.
We have urged the Connector and their MCOs to closely monitor utilization to see if copay increases are having an effect.
