UMass Medical School health policy experts will review updated enrollment and spending data on Massachusetts’ Medicaid program, MassHealth, in a webinar at noon June 29 hosted by the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA) Foundation.
Robert W. Seifert, MPA, and Carol Gyurina, MMHS, of the Center for Health Law and Economics, a unit within UMass Medical School’s Commonwealth Medicine division, will present the data they collected and prepared for “MassHealth: The Basics,” a series of charts released this month and produced by the Massachusetts Medicaid Policy Institute, a program of the BCBSMA Foundation.
The chart pack includes MassHealth enrollment data as of January 2016 and spending from state fiscal year 2015. While total MassHealth spending has increased more than 80 percent since 2007, that was driven mostly by enrollment growth. The average per-member spending was virtually unchanged from 2010 to 2014, and fell slightly in 2015.
Since the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), MassHealth enrollment has risen from 1.4 million to 1.9 million. The number of Massachusetts residents without insurance steadily declined from 2004 to 2010, increased through 2012 and has been stable since then. A large increase in MassHealth enrollment in 2014 coincided with ACA implementation.
The chart pack updates previous sets developed by the Center for Health Law and Economics staff in August 2015, April 2014, June 2012 and October 2011.