Posted on 04/05/2006 7:05:04 AM PDT by CSM
Tuesday, April 4, 2006 10:54 p.m. EDT Romney to Sign Mandatory Health Bill
BOSTON -- Lawmakers overwhelmingly approved a bill Tuesday that would make Massachusetts the first state to require that all its citizens have some form of health insurance.
The plan — approved just 24 hours after the final details were released — would use a combination of financial incentives and penalties to dramatically expand access to health care over the next three years and extend coverage to the state's estimated 500,000 uninsured.
If all goes as planned, poor people will be offered free or heavily subsidized coverage; those who can afford insurance but refuse to get it will face increasing tax penalties until they obtain coverage; and those already insured will see a modest drop in their premiums.
The measure does not call for new taxes but would require businesses that do not offer insurance to pay a $295 annual fee per employee.
The cost was put at $316 million in the first year, and more than a $1 billion by the third year, with much of that money coming from federal reimbursements and existing state spending, officials said.
The House approved the bill on a 154-2 vote. The Senate endorsed it 37-0.
A final procedural vote is needed in both chambers of the Democratic-controlled legislature before the bill can head to the desk of Gov. Mitt Romney, a potential Republican candidate for president in 2008. Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said the governor would sign the bill but would make some changes that wouldn't "affect the main purpose of the bill."
Legislators praised the effort.
"It's only fitting that Massachusetts would set forward and produce the most comprehensive, all-encompassing health care reform bill in the country," said House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, a Democrat. "Do we know whether this is perfect or not? No, because it's never been done before."
The only other state to come close to the Massachusetts plan is Maine, which passed a law in 2003 to dramatically expand health care. That plan relies largely on voluntary compliance.
"What Massachusetts is doing, who they are covering, how they're crafting it, especially the individual requirement, that's all unique," said Laura Tobler, a health policy analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The plan hinges in part on two key sections: the $295-per-employee business assessment and a so-called "individual mandate," requiring every citizen who can afford it to obtain health insurance or face increasing tax penalties.
Liberals typically support employer mandates, while conservatives generally back individual responsibility.
"The novelty of what's happened in this building is that instead of saying, `Let's do neither,' leaders are saying, `Let's do both,'" said John McDonough of Health Care for All. "This will have a ripple effect across the country."
The state's poorest — single adults making $9,500 or less a year — will have access to health coverage with no premiums or deductibles.
Those living at up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $48,000 for a family of three, will be able to get health coverage on a sliding scale, also with no deductibles.
The vast majority of Massachusetts residents who are already insured could see a modest easing of their premiums.
Individuals deemed able but unwilling to purchase health care could face fines of more than $1,000 a year by the state if they don't get insurance.
Romney pushed vigorously for the individual mandate and called the legislation "something historic, truly landmark, a once-in-a-generation opportunity."
One goal of the bill is to protect $385 million pledged by the federal government over each of the next two years if the state can show it is on a path to reducing its number of uninsured.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has threatened to withhold the money if the state does not have a plan up and running by July 1.
Is your name Steve Bailey? Do you work for the Boston Globe???? You sound like a typical liberal loonatic, hope this fine piece of legislation comes to your State pal, we'll see how fond of it you will be when you are paying out the kazoo, this is going to drive health care prices up even higher than they currently are, are you made of money?????
Read the history of my posts and you will notice that I and liberalism have little in common. I do however, believe in personal responsibility, and even many folks who vote GOP do not buy health insurance. I know roofers, sheet rockers, landscapers, framers, etc., all make very good money, but work essentially off the books, and pay very little in the way of taxes, and also buy no health insurance. Some of these folks are illegal aliens as well. After this becomes law, when they show up in the ER for treatment, they will asked to present proof of insurance. If they do not, they will be required to sign up. They may be asked what is their tax status and their immigration status (although I think that may have been left out of the bill). The idea of this bill is, the free loaders, the deadbeats, will be made to pay at least part of their fair share.
This is idiotic. It reminds me of the Medicaid prescription plan, under which doctors can write you twenty different prescriptions, whether they're necessary or not, and Uncle Sam will pay for every one of them. Having the government pay all the costs of health care only increases the costs.
Alright what happened to the conservatives in the republican party. The place is chock full of liberals.
I said I would never vote republican again, but when your health is as uninsurable as mine and Romney gives MA health insurance maybe he will be president and do the same for the other 49 states. I may have to eat my words. GO ROMNEY, 2008!!!!!!
Welcome to Free Republic.
Considering the pubbie Prez hopefuls, is there any hope for another Reagan?
Next comes Ohio
SB 68, Universal Health Care paid for by business taxes...
See post 371. If I am liberal, and Mitt Romney is liberal, then Newt Gingrich is liberal. While you are at it, click on the link and read in depth Newt's ideas. I think Newt has been on the right track and good ideas are neither Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, they are just smart.
Presumably their families would still want to have funerals...
Yes, repealing EMTALA is an essential step if nationalization is to be avoided.
On 373, is your answer yes? I think it is but you wouldn't have them dragged off to some pit for burial.
The system that existed prior to 1965 would be just fine.
There were clinics and hospitals for those who couldn't pay - even for those who could, but had other plans for their money.
The pay hospitals were (mostly) better - but that's natural, that's the way we allocate housing, food, transportation, and everything else.
would you be agreeable to allowing the dead ... to be just set aside and dragged off to some pit as they decompose?
Right now, at the most expensive and developed hospitals in the United States, the dead are set aside immediately in refrigerators until their families call for the body. Insurance has nothing at all to do with this, and your horrific image is a silly polemic trick.
And, if that is the case, would you be agreeable to allowing...the dying to be just set aside and dragged off to some pit as they decompose?
What to do with dying people who want free medical services is a hard problem. No question that since universal insurance, MUCH more money is spent in hospitals in the last week of life that was the case before.
The directive from most families is, "do everything!"
I'm not sure that you should be able to steal from your neighbors to get "everything" done, especially if, as in your question, the beggar in question is really dying.
Decomposition occurs after death and is not relevant to this part of your question.
I trained in one of the last great county hospitals. No patients had insurance (or, rather, no patients got a bill - some of them DID have insurance, but came to our place because it was so good.)
It is certainly false - grossly false - that, because a person had no insurance, he had no health care or medical treatment.
What IS true is that such persons didn't have PRIVATE medical treatment, and didn't have access to the latest and best technology.
The social decision to destroy the system of healthcare for the poor has been amazingly foolish. It is no more likely that the poor will have healthcare for the rich than that they will have mansions or gluttinous dinners.
To achieve a semblance of one-class care, the existing high class system will have to be destroyed.
And so it is being.
Hope you all like it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.