Public Sector to the Rescue

Today’s Census numbers show a slight downtick in the proportion of Americans who lack health insurance. This, Jonathan Cohn notes, despite a continued decline in the number of people with private sector health insurance. “The reason the overall numbers look good is rising enrollment in public insurance programs, particularly Medicaid.” He also notes that when you peer into the numbers, the state with the largest overall two-year increase in health insurance rates is Massachusetts, which has adopted the most aggressive health care reform agenda of any state and serves as a kinda sorta model for what progressive reform at the federal level — especially something authored by Ted Kennedy — might look like.