A Reporter’s Experience

With much gratitude to the Kaiser Family Foundation, I spent my time from September 2008 to May 2009 — as a Kaiser Media Fellow — researching the progress of Massachusetts’ new health reform legislation.

In 2006, Massachusetts passed landmark healthcare legislation mandating that every person in the commonwealth have health insurance. To make that possible, the state greatly expanded its subsidized health care options — such as MassHealth (Medicaid), and a new program called Commonwealth Care for people who don’t qualify for MassHealth but whose income still falls below 300 percent of the federal poverty level. It has also brokered a number of private plans for those with higher incomes, through a program called Commonwealth Choice. In concert with this mandate, the law encourages employers to provide health care subsidies — or face a fine.

My project looked at what’s working in the reform effort, and what’s not. I spoke with policy makers, physicians, patients, insurers, hospital administrators, business owners, and a variety of other stakeholders in health reform (most of us, really!) I produced (and continue to produce) radio pieces for WFCR, NPR, and other outlets — most of which appear in the health policy section of this website. This blog is meant to complement the produced stories with my observations and experiences while reporting on the topic.

I encourage community members to email me with any ideas for stories about health reform, and with YOUR OWN stories of what’s working and what’s not in Massachusetts’ experiment with universal coverage.

I should add that there are a number of established blogs on health reform that I encourage all interested observers to check out:

http://commonhealth.wbur.org
(WBUR’s blog, Common Health, administered by WBUR healthcare reporter Martha Bebinger.)

http://blog.hcfama.org
(Health Care for All’s blog)

Karen Brown

Journalist

Archived Projects

Reporter’s Interview with WFCR (11-3-08)

A day at Holyoke Health Center

It’s the economy….