Massachusetts passes compulsory health insurance law
Residents of Massachusetts will be thefirst in the nation required to carry health insurance, just asmotorists in many states are required to carry auto insurance.
Aftermonths of debate, state lawmakers approved a bill Tuesday that requiresindividuals to have coverage and tacks a $295 per worker annualassessment on employers who don’t provide it, with the aim of reducingthe state’s 550,000 uninsured to near zero within three years.
Thebill goes to Republican Gov. Mitt Romney. He’s expected to sign itbecause he proposed such a measure last summer. “It’s about 95% of whatI wanted,” he said. “We’ll be the only state in America where everycitizen has health insurance.”
The state will be the only one requiring that all individuals who can afford to purchase insurance do so.
“Thatis where they are really pioneers,” says Paul Ginsburg, an economistwith the Center for Studying Health System Change, a non-partisanresearch group in Washington. He says the only way to get universalcoverage is to require individuals to carry insurance.
Freecoverage will be provided to individuals at or below the federalpoverty line, which is $9,600 a year, and the state will subsidizecoverage for those up to three times the federal poverty level.
Ed: Massachusetts, unlike most states, does not have a high risk pool for hard-to-insure individuals. And requiring individuals to purchase health insurance is nothing remotely similar to providing universal health care. It will be interesting to see how the Massachusetts solution to the health care crisis fares in the next couple of years.