Massachusetts Is At It Again
There is a lot of talk about overhauling health care in the United States, but Massachusetts is actually trying to do it — again. Today, the home of some of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals and medical schools becomes the first state to require its residents to have health insurance or face financial penalties. Making insurance mandatory — and more affordable — for Massachusetts’s 6.5 million residents is the centerpiece of a law approved by the legislature last year that civic and business leaders hope will dramatically reduce the ranks of the state’s 400,000 uninsured and the number of people who seek costly “uncompensated” care in hospital emergency rooms.
Nearly 20 years ago, then-Gov. Michael S. Dukakis signed universal health-care legislation that was supposed to bring coverage to everyone by 1992. But the law’s requirement that employers provide coverage to workers or pay a tax proved unpopular.
July 1 marks the beginning of the “individual mandate” (the legal obligation to obtain health insurance), but the real deadline is Dec. 31. The state’s 175,000 employers have to pitch in, too. Businesses with 11 or more full-time employees that do not offer health insurance must pay an annual “fair share” assessment of $295 per employee. Costs are still too high for some. Already, state officials expect to exempt 60,000 residents from the new mandate because they cannot afford the insurance at the going rates, even though they earn too much to qualify for subsidies. That is a big reason that Massachusetts is destined to fall short of universal coverage under the new law, officials say, although proponents say covering 99% of residents is possible.
