BOSTON, MA (FRANKLIN COUNTY NOW) — The Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell has released a report Wednesday on the latest Health Care Cost Trends finding that regardless of health care coverage, out-of-pocket costs remain unaffordable.

The trends show lower and middle income Massachusetts residents are consistently paying more for health care costs. Also, lower-income households with employer-sponsored insurance were paying on average $550 more per year in health care expenditures than residents with insurance through the individual health insurance market.

Recommendations from the Attorney General’s Office include:

  • Indexing and monitoring, at the community level, how much Massachusetts households are paying for health care in relation to their capacity to pay and applying these measures against a target health care affordability benchmark that helps identify overburdened communities;
  • Increasing protections for consumers around providers’ financial assistance policies and practices, including uniform thresholds for discount eligibility, eligibility screening requirements, expansion of requirements to providers outside of hospitals, and discounts that apply to cost sharing, such as deductibles.
  • Increasing protections for consumers around collection of medical debt, such as requiring providers to proactively offer affordable payment plans and prohibiting providers from sending bills to collections or taking any “extraordinary collection actions” while bills are subject to good faith disputes;
  • Prohibiting medical debt from being reported to credit reporting bureaus and urging hospitals to adhere to the AGO’s recommended medical debt collection practices;
  • Addressing rising premium and deductible responsibility, particularly for lower-income households, such as through maintenance of subsidies for consumers buying insurance on the Connector and through employer implementation of programs that reduce spending on health care for lower-paid employees; and
  • Increasing support for hospitals that serve lower-income communities and that are disproportionally shouldering bad debt, including implementing strategies to reduce unwarranted provider price variation.