Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra feature stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write a 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Massachusetts Requires Everyone to Get Health Insurance, 04/17/06
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june06/insurance_4-17.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What is health insurance?

2. Who pays for health insurance?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What is Massachusetts doing to help improve medical care?

Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican and likely presidential candidate, signed a law last week aimed at providing health care to about 95 percent of the state's 500,000 uninsured residents by 2009.

"Every uninsured citizen in Massachusetts will soon have affordable health insurance and the costs of health care will be reduced. And we will need no new taxes, no employer mandate and no government takeover to make this happen," Romney wrote in an April 11 editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

2. How does health insurance work? How do health insurance companies make money?

People pay an insurance company a certain amount each month and then when they have to go to the doctor or have a medical emergency, the health insurance company pays most of the bills.

The insurance company makes money off of healthy people who don't have to go the doctor, but loses money on sick people who need a lot of care, just as the car insurance company makes money off of drivers who never have a crash, but loses it on drivers who get into big accidents.

3. What is Medicaid?

To help very low-income people, the federal government created Medicaid.

Each state decides who is eligible for Medicaid and more than 41 million Americans received Medicaid as of 2004.

4. How many uninsured Americans are there? Why might someone be uninsured?

But Americans who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid and cannot afford to or choose not to buy their own insurance are left uninsured. In 2004, a record 46 million Americans were uninsured.

Many uninsured people don't go to the doctor for check-ups because it is too expensive, so they end up in hospital emergency rooms when their health problems get severe.

5. Briefly describe the Massachusetts health insurance plan.

By 2007, all residents of the state are required to carry health insurance.

Some details of the plan have yet to be finalized, but the $1 billion of state money that had been collected to pay for the state's uninsured patients will now be used to subsidize insurance for people who can not afford it.

The state will create low- or no-cost plans for the lowest wage earning residents. And people will get a tax break to help pay for insurance.

People who can afford health insurance and fail to buy it will be penalized on their state taxes.

6. According to the story, will this plan be a model for health insurance nation-wide?

While lawmakers in Massachusetts hoped this health insurance reform will spread to other states, some insurance experts say it is unlikely.

Massachusetts has fewer uninsured citizens compared to the national statistics - about 10 percent compared to 18 percent - and the state already spends over $500 million to pay to treat the uninsured.

"I think it's going to be difficult for other states" to make changes, James Mongan, chief executive of Partners HealthCare, told Boston.com.

But others say Massachusetts' combination of individual mandates and employer contributions is promising and may encourage more states to tackle the difficult problem.

"The Massachusetts plan could become a catalyst and a galvanizing event at the national level, and a catalyst for other states," Brandeis University health policy professor Stuart Altman told Boston.com.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Research the Massachusetts plan in more detail. Do you think it will succeed? What are the pros and cons of the plan? How would you change the plan if you could.

2. In the United States there are private health insurance companies and government health insurance for low-income citizens. Some countries provide universal health insurance for all citizens, regardless of income. Research the topic and write an opinion piece about universal health insurance. Should this be a goal of the U.S.? Why or why not? Explain your reasoning.

3. Medicaid eligibility requirements are determined by each state. What are the requirements in your state? How many people qualify for Medicaid? How many are enrolled? What is the health insurance situation in your state? Could a plan like Massachusetts work there? Why or why not?

Write a 300-500 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra (extra@newshour.org). Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.