Here's another interesting piece of information about the health insurance mandate out of Massachusetts. New enrollment numbers for the state-subsidized Commenwealth Care health plans show that the number of people enrolled fell from July to September to a level lower than the six months preceeding.
Considering that the 2009 tax penalty for not having insurance in Massachusetts is increasing to as much as $912 per person, I'd have expected enrollment numbers, if anything, to go up. It's not a huge difference - enrollment wasn't up all that much in the months before. And the State's practice of automatically disenrolling people (sometimes erroneously) doesn't help retention. Nevertheless, less people holding on to their nearly free health plans has to make you wonder how well those plans are working.
Tags:
Access