After Massachusetts: What State Advocates Can Learn about Health Care Reform

Since Massachusetts passed a health care reform law a year ago, other states such as Illinois and California have begun designing innovative ways to provide affordable, quality health care for all their citizens. In the March–April 2007 issue of Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law and Policy, Victoria Pulos’s article, “The 2006 Massachusetts Health Care Reform Law,” describes how Massachusetts’ legislators “enacted a health care reform law intended to achieve near universal health care for its residents within three years.”

Pulos’s article analyzes how the Massachusetts law was formed, what the law means for the state, and what advocates in other states can learn from this law. Massachusetts’ advocates were involved in all aspects of forming, passing, and implementing the legislation. This analysis is timely and informative to advocates who are now leading the charge for health care coverage in a number of states.

Published by the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, the March–April 2007 Clearinghouse Review also features “Reforming State Rules on Asset Limits: How to Remove Barriers to Saving and Asset Accumulation in Public Benefit Programs,” an article by Shriver Center attorney Dory Rand. This Review issue has the following other articles by advocates and attorneys nationwide:

o    “Establishing Paternity through Voluntary Acknowledgment” by Paula Roberts
o    “Judicial Deference to Administrative Agencies and Its Limits” by Graham A. Martin and David A. Super
o    “American Dream or Nightmare?  Identifying and Meeting Needs of Owners of Manufactured Homes” by Ishbel Dickens
o    “Turning Closed Military Property into Affordable Housing and Homeless Services” by Patricia F. Julianelle
o    “Twenty Years of Federal Homeless Education Law: Where We Stand on Enforcement” by Joy Moses
o    “Affirmatively Litigating: Using Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 30(b)(6) to Depose an Organization and Avoid the ‘Discovery Runaround’” by Greg Bass

If you would like to schedule an interview with a legal editor or advocate, please contact Rikeesha Cannon at 312.368.2677. For more information on how to subscribe to Clearinghouse Review: Journal of Poverty Law and Policy and other Shriver Center publications, please visit our website at www.povertylaw.org.