The Baltimore Sun reports that in spite of the Supreme Court's tepid response last week to the individual mandate, the state of Maryland continues to be at the forefront of health reform. Both chambers of the General Assembly passed a bill official authorizing an insurance marketplace for individuals and small businesses.

The Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, which is caught up in the legal process right now, is at the center of addressing the issue of access for nearly 50 million uninsured Americans. The Bureau of National Affairs (BNA) Health Care Policy report released a detailed analysis of how a lack of insurance has a broader effect than just on the individual and his or her family.

One of the key missions of the Affordable Care Act is to shrink the number of uninsured Americans, currently approaching 50 million people. Government estimates project that health reform will provide coverage for a significant portion, somewhere between 30 and 40 million people by 2014. In all of the bickering about the appropriateness of the law and its measures, there has been little discussion regarding how insuring more Americans will positively impact those who already have coverage from an employer or government program.

Data released by the Census Bureau has confirmed what many probably suspected: The recession has swelled the ranks of the uninsured. The number of uninsured, at 50.7 million, is the highest since such data began being collected in 1987, and jumped 4.4 million since just last year -- the highest one-year jump recorded since 1987.

The Wall Street Journal's Health Blog shared a report that explores who was still uninsured (just 4.1 percent of residents) in Massachusetts in 2008, despite the 2006 passage of health reform that is similar in many respects to the law now being rolled out on a national level. The report can be found on the WSJ blog here (http://bit.ly/bZBL4A).

An AP article out today provides a comprehensive account of the significant early changes under health reform that will take effect by next year. It also contains the first government estimate that I've seen that predicts how many uninsured Americans will be covered under the earliest changes in health reform: 1 million.

In April, this blog raised questions about whether the $5 billion set aside in the health care reform bill for a high-risk pool would be sufficient to cover all of those who have been unable to get coverage for at least six months because of a pre-existing condition.