>This is confusidng with the limited amount of information you provide.
>If you have more detailed info I'd appreciate hearing more.
Sorry, there really isn't much more. The studies are ...or were... being closely guarded by the MMS. The Globe got a copy leaked to them, and did what almost amounted to a teaser piece, succeeding in provoking only the cautious, partisan comments I quoted. The studies were commissioned in '97, are scheduled to be reviewed next week by the Board of Delegates (the MMS governing body), and nobody wants to discuss them meanwhile.
Here's the rest of the 'substance':
200 residents rallied on the steps of the State House Tuesday in support of a single-payer bill, just before a Joint Healthcare Ctte hearing on that legislation.
Mass spands $36G on health care each year, and the admin savings plus 'other aggressive savings based on the single-payer model' (they don't say what those would be) would cut $5G from that. All currently uninsured residents could be covered, plus coverage upgraded for those who have insurance now, for $4G of the $5G, whence the reckoning that there'd be an immediate $1G savings.
The worst case is reckoned to be $2.5G in 1999 in Mass from cutting admin cost duplication alone. If everyone were covered immediately under this scenario, the researchers reckon it would take til 2005 to see a net reduction, estimated to be $170M in that year alone. So in the worst case, covering everyone would put the state in a hole til 2004, after which it would be out again.