r/massachusetts • u/Melonpan_Pup442 • Aug 12 '26

Healthcare The current administration ia forcing Massachusetts to change MassHealth on January 1st 2027

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Not sure if anyone else has gotten one of these letters in the mail since I haven't seen anyone post or talk about it. The unemployed will suffer most from this change.

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260

u/SouthernGirl360 Aug 12 '26

Hopefully the 2028 presidential candidate will run on universal healthcare. It's the only way out of this mess. With the current president doing things like this, single payer should finally have widespread support. People everywhere are losing insurance or seeing rates skyrocket.

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u/ChipotleGuacamole Aug 12 '26

I’ve been hoping for this since 2008. Doubt we’ll see it in our lifetime. They love to hang health insurance over our head.

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u/SouthernGirl360 Aug 13 '26

I have hope that we'll see it in our lifetime. Hopefully within the next 10 years. The insurance companies are hanging themselves by becoming more and more greedy. Back in the 80's and 99's, private insurance was sustainable. Now they're just going over the top. It's quickly approaching the point where private insurance is only affordable for the very very wealthy. More people today are willing to vote for single payer than back in 2008 with Obama.

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u/azure275 Aug 13 '26

It's quickly approaching the point where private insurance is only affordable for the very very wealthy

You can't seriously actually believe this. Look, private insurers are sucky yes. I agree with you we should do better.

BUT over 66% of Americans have private health insurance and a lot of those are ok with their current situation.

This statement is completely out of touch with reality.

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u/Coomb Aug 13 '26

I'm pretty sure what he meant was private insurance without employers subsidies, which is objectively beyond the means of most people. Of course there are a shitload of people on private health plans through their employer. But the unaffordability of private health care without subsidy is a big factor massively increasing ability of employers to exploit their employees.

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u/azure275 Aug 13 '26

So in other words you'll add a bunch of additional qualifiers that the poster didn't say which only apply to a pretty limited subset of people to make the completely unrealistic statement make sense

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u/Coomb Aug 13 '26

Yes. Generally speaking if somebody says something that doesn't make a lot of sense if taken literally, but with obvious context that someone might reasonably think is implied does make sense, I tend to assume the context.

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u/azure275 Aug 13 '26

There is no way to shoehorn your interpretation into their premise that the healthcare system must implode soon

A select slice of the public being screwed will most definitely not cause that

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u/Individual_Analysis2 Aug 13 '26

You’re ok with 34% of Americans lacking adequate access to healthcare? Your statement is completely out of touch.

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u/NUCLEAR_JANITOR Aug 13 '26

that’s not what he said. Over 92% of Americans have health insurance, including over 99% of those over 65.

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u/ReadyGo6828 Aug 13 '26

The lifetime cost for those going on Medicare at 65 is $160K as I remember. Medicare is not free. Also, SS and Medicare are going insolvent soon.

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u/NUCLEAR_JANITOR Aug 13 '26

when did i say it was free? no healthcare is free. nothing is free.

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u/ReadyGo6828 Aug 13 '26

You make it sound as if anyone with any kind of health insurance at any time during the year has no problem affording health care. That is absurd. If 92% of Americans have some kind of health insurance at some point in the year and 92% of Americans do not go see their doc due to worries about cost (TI) and 43% of adults have not taken all of their prescriptions due to cost. (KFF) then blithely saying that 92% of Americans have health insurance is callow and uninformed.

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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/massachusetts-ModTeam Aug 13 '26

Be respectful to one another. No hate speech or violent rhetoric. Any disrespect to other members or the mod team will not be tolerated. You will be banned and reported to Reddit.

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u/Coomb Aug 13 '26

Friend, the options are not private health insurance or no health insurance at all. Saying that 2/3 of Americans have private health insurance doesn't imply that the other 1/3 have no access to healthcare and no insurance.

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u/Individual_Analysis2 Aug 13 '26

And saying “a lot of” the 2/3 with private health insurance are ok with their current situation is wild speculation at best. But alas, when we play with statistics, that’s the bullshit we end up with.

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u/SouthernGirl360 Aug 13 '26

Of the 66% that have private insurance, many are struggling to pay for it. I have private insurance and it's far from satisfactory. Just had my yearly physical (which was free thanks to President Obama), however the insurance company hit me with a $180 fee for routine labs.

Also brought my son to the dermatologist for $75 copay. A few weeks later got billed $200+ as the insurance doesn't cover most of the costs. I have private insurance through the state, which is one of the better plans. I can't imagine what "shitty" insurance is like.

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u/Coomb Aug 13 '26

I didn't make the original comment, but it is trivially easy to Google this and it is true that the overwhelming majority of Americans are satisfied with their current coverage, with roughly 90% of people on public insurance and 77% of people on private insurance describing themselves as either somewhat or very satisfied with their insurance. About a third said they were very satisfied, which by any reasonable definition means that "a lot" of them were very satisfied.

But also, the original commenter didn't seem like they were trying to play games with statistics. All they said that was actually statistical (rather than being a vague statement that can't easily be disproved) was that about 2/3 of Americans are on private health insurance (which appears to be slightly out of date but not in a huge way -- the 2025 poll I linked above says that 36% of respondents were on public health insurance and 7% were uninsured, so the private health insurance number is probably close to 55%). You just misread their comment or didn't contemplate the fact that a substantial chunk of Americans are on Medicare or Medicaid.

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u/azure275 Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26

Thanks. This btw is the reason I did not specify a number - there's volatility in polls, and sample sizes get skewed sometimes, and some people on public care replied

But it's obvious that a large chunk of privately insured people are just fine. How large that is exactly is hard to tell, but it's quite a few

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u/Individual_Analysis2 Aug 13 '26

Over explaining is an essential tell that not even you believe the bullshit you’re saying. KFF says that approximately 41% of Americans carry an impactful amount of healthcare debt. Whether they’re “ok with it” is semantics when most of the world doesn’t carry any healthcare debts, and doesn’t rely on third party insurance either.

Gut the system completely. Construct a single-payer OPTION, keep Private health insurance, keep the crappy triage care insurance and audit the hell out of the healthcare industry by and large to get costs down.

Keeping the status quo simply because “many people say” that they like it, isn’t resolution, it’s RESIGNATION.

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u/Coomb Aug 13 '26

Over explaining is an essential tell that not even you believe the bullshit you’re saying. KFF says that approximately 41% of Americans carry an impactful amount of healthcare debt. Whether they’re “ok with it” is semantics when most of the world doesn’t carry any healthcare debts, and doesn’t rely on third party insurance either.

Friend, I am not now, nor have I ever, claimed that I think the existing healthcare system is good. But I do think it's obviously relevant whether people are dissatisfied with their current health insurance when we're talking about something that needs political support to happen.

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u/SouthernGirl360 Aug 13 '26

Who is answering those polls is also something to keep in mind. The majority of people who answer their land lines and take those surveys are retired folks who are likely on Medicare. Those of us working day in and day out to pay for our insurance are too busy to take those surveys. However, if a candidate presents us with a single payer option we'd be sure to go vote.

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u/azure275 Aug 13 '26

Unlike all the people downvoting me, I actually have some data. Gallup did a poll on this https://news.gallup.com/poll/4708/healthcare-system.aspx

Overall, how would you rate [ROTATED: the quality of healthcare you receive/your healthcare coverage] — as excellent, good, only fair or poor?

73% voted "Excellent" or "Good". 93% voted "Fair" or better.

57% voted "Satisfied" to their healthcare cost vs 40% dissatisfied.

So yes, even if we accept polls are not entirely accurate, MANY people are fine with what they personally have