A new report documents how health care expansion actions taken in the Maryland General Assembly and Congress over several years have led to major cost savings for Marylanders.

The analysis found that expanding access to affordable health insurance has significantly reduced Maryland hospitals’ costs for providing care to the uninsured or those unable to pay for care, reducing those costs by nearly $500 million since 2007. Those savings help bring down the cost of health insurance for all of us.

The key drivers in this were the federal Affordable Care Act and Maryland’s expansion of access to Medicaid which together have dramatically reduced the number of people in the state who lack insurance (“Open enrollment under way in Maryland’s health insurance marketplace, with a new carrier and expanded savings for young adults,” Nov. 3).

The analysis makes clear that what we are doing in Maryland is working well. We are bringing down health costs for hospitals significantly, and, in turn, that reduces insurance premiums for everybody.

Maryland’s former House Speaker Mike Busch called uncompensated care provided by hospitals a hidden tax on every person’s health insurance policy in the state. Now, we have documented our progress toward eliminating those costs.

We are committed to building on this progress by reducing our uninsured rate to as close to 0% as we can so that we can also continue to reduce the hidden health care tax on all of us.

— Vincent DeMarco, Baltimore

The writer is president of the Maryland Health Care for All! Coalition.

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