BOSTON (AP) — In the five years since Massachusetts' landmark health care initiative was signed into law, it has served as a blueprint for national health care, a political football in last year's elections and a talking point in the 2012 presidential contest.
The law also has quietly extended health coverage to hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts' 6.5 million residents who would otherwise be forced to seek health care in emergency rooms or forgo it altogether.
More than 98 percent of Massachusetts residents currently have insurance, the highest in the country, with 400,000 of those being signed up as a result of the law, many of them under a subsidized health plan created by the law known as Commonwealth Care. Among children, the rate is 99 percent.
Still, deep problems remain.
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