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CommonHealth Tuesday On Radio Boston: The Health Care 'Triple Whammy'


In a lively conversation today with Radio Boston co-host Meghna Chakrabarti, Rachel explains the new, groundbreaking findings on how, in Massachusetts health care, the poor tend to subsidize the rich.

(Read her full post on that aspect of attorney general Martha Coakley's latest report here.) Never slow on the uptake, Meghna says:

"This is what I think the biggest eye-opener was for me in your reporting on what the AG uncovered: It's that it seems like there's a health care triple whammy here.
One is that people in more affluent zipcodes in Massachusetts are just demanding more services.
Two, they're going to the hospitals and doctors that are charging more for the same services.
And three, as you just said, since everybody pays roughly the same dollar value in their premiums, for working people it's just a much larger percentage of their overall income that's going to, as the attorney general put it, subsidize health care services for more affluent people."

Yes, Rachel says. There's a stereotype that poor people cost the health system more money but "in fact what the attorney general found is just the opposite. "Click here to listen.

This program aired on June 28, 2011. The audio for this program is not available.

Headshot of Carey Goldberg

Carey Goldberg Editor, CommonHealth
Carey Goldberg is the editor of WBUR's CommonHealth section.

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