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The new MassHealth (Medicaid) insurance benefit to help smokers quit is already paying off.  Within one year, users of the benefit had dramatic reductions in hospitalizations for heart attacks, declines in emergency and clinic visits for asthma, and a significant decrease in acute birth complications.

In the first two and a half years of the benefit, over 75,000 MassHealth members used it to try to quit smoking.  This represents 40% of smokers on MassHealth, a level unprecedented in the nation.  Cost savings are being studied, and all indications are that they will be significant.

Researchers from the Massachusetts Tobacco Cessation and Prevention Program (MTCP) found that up to 38% fewer MassHealth cessation benefit users were hospitalized for heart attacks in the first year after using the benefit and that 17% fewer benefit users visited the emergency room for asthma symptoms in the first year after using the benefit.  Researchers also found that there were 17% fewer claims for adverse maternal birth complications since the benefit was implemented.

Beginning in July 2006, MassHealth began providing coverage of smoking cessation as part of the state’s health care reform initiative. MTCP promoted the new benefit through radio and transit ads and extensive community outreach.

MTCP and MassHealth worked together to design a barrier-free benefit that includes all FDA-approved medications to quit smoking, behavioral counseling, and features very low co-pays of $1 to $3 to increase ease of access.

The benefit was introduced into an environment that encourages quitting smoking: Massachusetts has smoke-free workplaces, high cigarette taxes, and a non-smoking social norm, all of which contribute to smokers wanting to quit.  In Massachusetts, 77% of adult cigarette smokers want to quit, 60% of smokers have tried to quit within the past year, and 44% report that they plan to quit in the next 30 days.

Smoking rates among the MassHealth population had been stagnant for the past decade before the benefit’s implementation.  After only two and a half years of providing members with barrier-free access to cessation, the smoking rate has declined by nearly 26 percent.

Smoking remains the number one preventable cause of illness and death in the Commonwealth and in the United States.  More than 8,000 Massachusetts residents die annually from the effects of smoking, and tobacco use is associated with $4.3 billion in excess health care costs in Massachusetts each year.

Download the fact sheet for more information about the study.  (Click here for Word format.)