Record enrollment in Mass. health insurance exchange
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Enrollment in Massachusetts' Commonwealth Care health insurance exchange has hit another all-time high, with 206,393 covered lives in May.
This is a slight increase from April, when enrollment set the previous monthly record of 205,475.
Enrollment in Commonwealth Care, the program created by Massachusetts' pioneering 2006 health care reform law to provide subsidized coverage to the lower-income uninsured, has sharply increased since about a year ago, when state officials amended eligibility requirements to comply with an earlier Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that struck down a 2009 law that had barred certain legal immigrants from the program.
Under the measure, passed during the Great Recession to save the state money, legal immigrants who had lived in the United States for less than five years no longer were allowed to enroll in the state's Commonwealth Care program. Instead, about 25,000 legal immigrants were allowed to enroll in a new state program, Commonwealth Care Bridge, that offered less generous coverage and required higher premiums than the regular Commonwealth Care program.
Commonwealth Care is available to uninsured state residents with incomes of less than 300% of the federal poverty level, or $46,530 for a family of two.
The Commonwealth Care program has helped Massachusetts achieve the lowest uninsured rate — 3.4% in 2011 — of any U.S. state, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
The May enrollment figures were reported Thursday by the Massachusetts Health Connector, which administers Commonwealth Care and a second exchange, Commonwealth Choice, which offers unsubsidized coverage to individuals and employers with up to 50 employees.
