The archetype for the nation's health reform law has helped reduce the death rate in the years since its implementation, according to a study.
Since the 2006 expansion of healthcare coverage in Massachusetts, the overall mortality rate among adults between ages 20 and 64 in that state declined by 2.9% between 2007 and 2010 compared with the period between 2001 and 2005, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health found in a study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
The reform law, which served as the model for the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, prevented about 320 deaths annually or one life for every 830 people who gained healthcare coverage, researchers estimated.
“Given that Massachusetts’ health reform was in many ways the model for the Affordable Care Act, it is critical to understand the law’s potential implications for population health,” the study’s lead author, Dr. Benjamin Sommers, assistant professor of health policy and economics at the Harvard School of Public Health, said in a news release. “What we found in Massachusetts after reform was a significant reduction in deaths from the kinds of illnesses where we expect healthcare to have the biggest impact, including infections, cancer and cardiovascular disease.”
The study found that the death rate for preventable diseases declined by 4.5% over the study period, and that populations that saw the biggest health gains were in low-income counties with high proportions of uninsured residents before the law. Also, the mortality rate among minorities declined nearly twice as much as it did for whites, according to the study.
Under the Massachusetts law, almost every resident was required to obtain health coverage. Those making less than 150% of the federal poverty level were eligible for health coverage under the state’s Medicaid program. According to a 2012 research brief by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the state’s uninsured rate fell from 10.9% in 2006 to 6.3% in 2010 compared with the national uninsured rate, which increased from 17.1% to 18.4% during the same period.
A lack of health insurance has been linked to a higher risk for mortality. A 2009 study published in the American Journal of Public Health estimated that as many as 45,000 deaths that occur in the U.S. each year were associated with a lack of health insurance.
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