Jonathan Kantrowitz

A new poll by the Harvard School of Public Health and The Boston Globe finds 59% of Massachusetts residents who are aware of the state’s health reform legislation, which was enacted in 2006, support it. A little more than one in four oppose it (28%), and 13% are not sure. The level of public support for the law has declined somewhat in the last year, from 69% saying they support the law in 2008 to 59% in the current poll. The current number is similar to the 61% found in 2006. Support for the law varied by party affiliation, with 76% of Democrats, 56% of Independents, and just 35% of Republicans saying they support the legislation. The poll was conducted September 14-16, 2009.

Massachusetts is currently facing the impact of a severe recession, state budgetary and fiscal problems, and continued rising health care costs. Despite this difficult environment, the poll found that 79% want the law to continue, with 57% favoring continuing it with some changes and 22% continuing it as is. Only 11% of state residents favored repealing the health reform law. There has been no change in the last year in those supporting repeal of the legislation–12% in 2008 versus 11% in 2009.

“The implication of this poll for the national debate is that it is possible to get continuing public support for a program that leads to nearly everyone in the population having health insurance coverage,” said Robert J. Blendon, Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Impact of the law

The principal intent of the Massachusetts legislation was to provide health coverage for nearly all of the state’s residents and, as a result of the widely discussed measure, Massachusetts is the only state where nearly all of the population has health insurance coverage. The poll found that 64% thought the health reform law was successful in reducing the number of uninsured in the state, 22% thought it was not successful, and 14% were unsure.

The poll also asked respondents about the impact of the health reform law on their own health care in terms of quality, costs, and their ability to pay medical bills. On all these measures, about half reported that the law did not have much of an impact on them. Of those who reported an impact, more thought it helped than thought it hurt their quality of care (23% versus 14%), and their ability to pay their medical bills (24% versus 14%). However, on the cost of their own care, the results were not statistically different (24% saying hurt versus 19% helped).

Views about the future

Though the legislation is currently popular, the poll found concerns about the future. The Massachusetts public is divided on whether the state can afford to continue with this law as it currently stands. Forty-three percent said it could not, 40% said it could, and 16% were unsure. Nearly six out of ten (57%) wanted some changes in the law. Those who said this were asked to state in their own words what was the most important change that needed to be made. The responses fell into three categories: lower future costs (30%), increase the coverage and benefits of the current program (23%), and limit the eligibility for subsidies in the future (11%).

“The clear message for state government leaders is that the public wants some action to address the long-term affordability of this program,” said Blendon.

The poll also asked about an issue of recent controversy in the state. To help balance the state budget, the Massachusetts government cut 70% of the funding for subsidized health insurance for certain low-income legal immigrants. Respondents were asked their views about this policy in the future. Forty-three percent said the funding for health insurance coverage for low-income legal immigrants should be fully restored, 28% thought the reduced funding should be left as is, and 19% thought the funding should be entirely eliminated.

Methodology

The Massachusetts Health Reform Poll was conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health and The Boston Globe. Representatives of the two organizations worked closely to develop the survey questionnaire and analyze the results of the poll. The Boston Globe and the Harvard School of Public Health are publishing independent summaries of the poll’s findings, and each organization bears sole responsibility for the work that appears under its name. The Harvard School of Public Health and The Boston Globe paid for the survey and related expenses.

The project team was lead by Robert J. Blendon, a professor who holds joint appointments in the Harvard School of Public Health and the Harvard Kennedy School, and Gideon Gil, Health and Science editor of The Boston Globe. The Harvard research team also included Gillian SteelFisher, John Benson and Kathleen Weldon.

Interviews were conducted with 506 randomly selected Massachusetts state residents, age 18 and older, via telephone by Social Science Research Solutions of Media, Pennsylvania. The interviewing period was September 14-16, 2009. The data were weighted to accurately reflect the demographics of the state’s adult population as described by the U.S. Census.

When interpreting these findings, one should recognize that all surveys are subject to sampling error. Results may differ from what would be obtained if the whole Massachusetts adult population had been interviewed. The size of this error varies with the number of persons surveyed and the magnitude of difference in responses to each question. The sampling error for surveys of 506 respondents is ±5.5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

Connecticut Democratic Party Chairwomen Nancy DiNardo today asked Governor M. Jodi Rell to take time from her vacation in South Carolina to answer some questions about the recent actions of her top staff members concerning a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by the Hartford Courant’s Jon Lender. Lender recently submitted an FOI request to obtain the emails between Rell’s Chief of Staff M. Lisa Moody and her budget czar Robert Genuario. As a result, it became clear that Rell knowingly tried to use her line-item veto power illegally while attempting a budget dog-and-pony show complete with wagging fingers and lectures to Democratic lawmakers. Lender received a collection of emails based on his request, but one email in particular – Moody’s email to Genuario ignoring the administration’s top lawyers and self-righteously declaring that she and Governor Rell disagreed with their decision – was missing. Lender subsequently submitted another FOI request and received the missing email, but Governor Rell has remained quiet about her office’s handling of the entire situation, including the FOI issue.

“Enough is enough,” said DiNardo. “The people of Connecticut didn’t elect Lisa Moody or Rell’s press people to be Governor of this state. They elected Jodi Rell, and if, in a moment of obvious mismanagement and ineptitude within her own administration, she is unable to give her constituents straight answers to pressing questions, she clearly doesn’t deserve to be Governor in the first place. Her silence, as usual, speaks volumes, and once again, we’re left wondering if Governor Rell is actually in charge of her staff and this state or is Lisa Moody running the show.”

DiNardo called on the Governor, herself, to answer the following questions:

· Have you discussed the missing email with Chief of Staff Lisa Moody?

· At what point did the missing email get pulled, and by whom?

· Are you satisfied with how your office responded to Jon Lender’s FOI request?

· Will you discipline Moody or whomever was responsible for apparently violating state FOI laws?

· What assurances can you give to Connecticut residents that your office fully understands FOI laws and they will comply with future requests?

· Will you order a review of what happened and who was responsible for this apparent failure to adequately respond to the FOI request?

As students and their tax paying parents settle into the return to school, most are in the dark about the unprecedented $100 billion in education funds made available through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This historic investment, focused on turning around the nation’s 5,000 worst performing schools, is equal to nearly 16 percent of the nation’s annual expenditures on public K-12 education.

By combining the datasets, Socrata provides a resource that allows for a clearer view of where Recovery Act education funds are actually being distributed. A quick scan shows that not one of the schools with the top ten highest percentages of free and reduced lunch is in the list of the top ten schools for highest stimulus funding per child.

$10 billion of the new funding has been slated for Title I programs to provide additional assistance to schools with a high concentration of families that live in poverty. By looking at the U.S. Department of Education’s website for Title I funding, parents can find nearly 14,000 data points. Making sense of the data, however, requires file downloads and proprietary desktop software. For many economically-disadvantaged constituents – the same constituents who may benefit the most from this information – sorting, filtering, and sharing this data may be out of reach. The average citizen can find information about their next cell phone more easily than they can about their child’s school.

To help average citizens clarify these figures, Socrata transformed the U.S. Department of Education’s data in a Social Data Player, making the data easier to access. Now parents can filter, sort, and share the data without proprietary software. Socrata has also combined data from The National Center for Education Statistics to add much needed perspective of school poverty. The data looks at how many students qualify for free and reduced lunch in each district — a leading indicator for poverty levels at schools in the United States.

of potentially dangerous people, because he had protested against Governor Rell, and asked others to join him.

CNN reports:

In person (link offers videos and a great view of the back of my head). Read a comprehensive write-up of the meeting at CTBob by Kirby. (Scroll down to “We Are Given Moments Historically.”)

and via video.

Senator Dodd:

“They’re not bad people – they reflect to a large extent the constituencies from where they come.”

Me:

“Except for Joe Lieberman, of course.”

New Census data from the American Community Survey reveal that the economic recession has hit Connecticut families hard, as the percentage of people in poverty in Connecticut in 2008 increased over 2007 levels by the largest margin of any state in the country. In 2008, 9.3% of Connecticut residents (314,806) had incomes under the Federal Poverty Level, up from 7.9% in 2007. Among Connecticut children under age 18, 12.5% (99,580 children) lived in families with incomes under the Federal Poverty Level in 2008, up from 11.1% in 2007. These increases in poverty for all people and for children in poverty were the largest estimated increases of any state in the country that experienced a statistically significant increase in poverty rates. (For a two-parent household with two children, the poverty level was $21,200 in 2008.) Despite Connecticut’s official goal of cutting the child poverty rate in half by the year 2014, the state is losing ground in the fight to reduce poverty.

Poverty rates for residents of the cities of New Haven, Norwalk, and Stamford increased significantly between 2007 and 2008. The estimate of child poverty also increased in Norwalk. Poverty increased significantly for residents of Fairfield, New Haven, and Windham counties, as well as for children in Windham county.

The 2008 estimates measure poverty only during the first half of Connecticut’s recession, which began in March 2008. The organization suggested that the poverty rate may become worse in 2009, given that the state experienced its worst unemployment levels since 1977 this year. Connecticut’s unemployment rate rose from 6.1% in August 2008 to a peak of 8.1% in August 2009.

Estimates of poverty rates varied significantly across Connecticut’s cities: Bridgeport (21.6%), Danbury (9.9%), Hartford (33.5%), New Britain (18.2%), New Haven (27.3%), Norwalk (9.6%), Stamford (12.3%), and Waterbury (19.6%). Note: click on city names for more extensive data.

The percentage of children under 18 in poverty in Connecticut cities was also reported for Bridgeport (28.0%), Danbury (13.7%), Hartford (46.1%), New Britain (30.0%), New Haven (34.1%), Norwalk (16.9%), Stamford (14.3%), and Waterbury (30.7%). Poverty estimates are only available for cities with populations over 65,000. The American Community Survey also provided poverty estimates for Connecticut’s counties and Congressional districts:

Fairfield County

4th Congressional District (Representative Himes)

With the establishment of the Child Poverty Council in 2004, Connecticut became the first state in the nation to set a goal of reducing child poverty — by half by 2014. In 2003 (the baseline year for the Council), 10.8% of Connecticut’s children in families (“related children”) had incomes below the poverty line. The state set a goal of reducing the poverty rate to only 5% of children in 2014. Connecticut’s 2008 poverty rate for children in families (12.1%) has worsened over the last several years (indeed, the 2001 rate was 9.7%). To meet the goal of reducing child poverty by half, Connecticut must reverse course dramatically, according to Connecticut Voices. (“Related children,” who might also be considered “children in families,” are those related to the head of household. Because data collection methods for “all children” in poverty changed in 2006 for the American Community Survey, comparisons for all children in poverty should not be made between estimates after 2005 and earlier figures.)

The Federal Poverty Level is an inadequate measure of what families actually need to meet the cost of living in Connecticut, according to Connecticut Voices. Census data indicate that one in four children (25.6%) in the state lived in families with income under 200% of the Federal Poverty Level in 2008, which roughly corresponds to Connecticut’s Self-Sufficiency Standard, an official state measure of the income necessary for a family to meet basic needs. (This measure was established by Connecticut law.)

Nationwide, the American Community Survey estimated that 13.2% of all Americans (39.1 million) live in poverty, while 18.2% of children (13.2 million) live in poverty. There was a statistically significant increase in poverty among all Americans – from 13% in 2007 to 13.2% in 2008.

That’s me asking him the initial question (at a meeting The Senator was gracious enough to have with some CT. bloggers.)