Massachusetts Governor Announces Plan to Insure State Residents Without Coverage
Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) on Sunday in a Boston Globe opinion piece proposed a "sweeping expansion" of health insurance to about 460,000 uninsured state residents, the Globe reports. In his plan, called "Commonwealth Care," Romney proposes:
- Eliminating some state requirements about what insurers must cover;
- Extending the length of health coverage the state gives to people who are unemployed and making the coverage available to workers who are not yet eligible for insurance through an employer;
- Enrolling as many as 106,000 uninsured state residents who are eligible but not yet in Medicaid; and
- Replacing the state's Uncompensated Care Pool with so-called Safety Net Care which provides uninsured residents with "aggressively managed treatment" in a provider network, the Globe reports (Greenberger, Boston Globe, 11/21).
In the opinion piece, Romney said that the plan will include medical malpractice reform, electronic health records, medical quality and cost reporting and an effort to increase the number of nurses in the state (Romney, Boston Globe, 11/21). The Massachusetts plan will not require a tax increase, require employers to provide coverage to employees or require state-sponsored health insurance for every resident, according to Romney (Greenberger, Boston Globe, 11/21). The proposal follows a report released Tuesday by the Urban Institute and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts that found providing health care coverage to uninsured state residents would cost between $374 million and $539 million with economic and social benefits to the state of $1.2 billion to $1.7 billion. Massachusetts Senate President Robert Travaglini (D) on Tuesday also said he plans to expand health care coverage to at least 50% of the state's uninsured residents by Dec. 31, 2006 (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 11/18). State officials could begin discussing Romney's plan this week (Greenberger, Boston Globe, 11/21). This is part of the Morning Briefing, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.
