State coverage for cessation programs hailed
Jump to full article: Boston (MA) Globe, 2009-11-18
Author: Stephen Smith, Globe Staff
Intro: Lower income Massachusetts smokers have dramatically abandoned their habit amid a major state campaign that vigorously promotes and pays for tobacco addiction treatment, according to a report scheduled to be released this morning.
Smoking rates among the poor plummeted 26 percent in the first two years of the ongoing state program, a striking result that is already drawing national attention to the effort. Officials targeted a population that historically had the highest smoking rates in Massachusetts.
The study, issued by the Department of Public Health, found early indications that the tobacco cessation efforts - aimed at patients enrolled in the state’s medical insurance for the poor, MassHealth - are reaping immediate health benefits.
Once patients began receiving counseling and medications to help snuff out their habits, they made fewer trips to emergency rooms because of wheezing bouts of asthma, and there was a trend toward fewer life-threatening heart attacks.
The stop-smoking initiative, which covers virtually all the costs of cessation counseling and drugs, was ordered by the Legislature as part of the landmark health care overhaul in 2006 with a dual purpose: saving lives and money. National health leaders plan to point to the Massachusetts experiment to bolster efforts to expand tobacco cessation services as part of federal health care legislation.
“These findings are extraordinary - they have major public health implications as Congress is debating health care reform,’’ said Matthew Myers . . .
The expectation, based on the experience of other states and health plans, was that 5 to 10 percent of MassHealth patients who smoked might seek help in the first couple of years, Keithly said.
Instead, from July 2006 to May of this year, about 75,000 patients had used the services - two of every five MassHealth smokers.
“We wondered if this population would be interested in cessation,’’ said Dr. Nancy Rigotti, director of the Tobacco Research and Treatment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. “It turns out they were interested - they just couldn’t afford it.’’
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