Health Care Reform Stages a Comeback in Massachusetts

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Abstract
Since the demise of efforts to reform the national health care system in the fall of 1994, there have been few new initiatives to address the problems faced by the more than 40 million Americans who lack health insurance. Even state governments that were at the forefront of efforts to deal with this problem in the early 1990s saw their initiatives stalled, scaled back, or repealed.1 As the focus of debates on health policy shifted to issues such as controlling Medicare and Medicaid costs and protecting the rights of already insured consumers enrolled in managed-care plans, the public turned its attention away from the needs of those without any insurance coverage at all. Recent developments on both the federal and state levels, however, suggest that a new and more realistic round of reform is beginning.