Health Affairs is a peer-reviewed journal, which is why it was surprising to see it publish a recent article on the Massachusetts health reform, by Long et al [gated, but with abstract]. Based on telephone surveys, the authors declare that RomneyCare “continued to fare well in 2010.” This is an important finding, as the authors consider RomneyCare “the template for the federal Affordable Care Act of 2010.”
Unfortunately, in several cases the authors fail to inform readers that their results are contradicted by other, possibly more reliable, sources of information. They also neglect to put some of their results in proper context.