Editorials, Opinion Piece Address Massachusetts Health Insurance Law

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Article Date: 05 May 2006 - 0:00 PDT

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Two editorials and an opinion piece recently addressed a law enacted last month by Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) that will require all uninsured state residents to purchase health insurance by July 1, 2007, and will require employers in the state with 11 or more employees to provide coverage for workers. Summaries appear below.

• Detroit Free Press: "Michigan could take a lesson from Massachusetts -- not necessarily by cloning the Bay State's much-ballyhooed new health care program but by just doing something about this very serious and costly problem" of the one million uninsured residents in Michigan, a Free Press editorial states. The editorial adds that a plan by Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D) to take Medicaid charity care funding and put it toward coverage for the uninsured "should be fast-tracked, because it's only a start to tackling the problem" (Detroit Free Press, 5/1).
  
  
• Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, Newark Star-Ledger: The federal government should "look to the states for inspiration, ideas and old-fashioned lessons on how creativity and compromise can help solve" the U.S. uninsured population problem, Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, writes in a Star-Ledger opinion piece. She adds that Massachusetts' legislation, along with other "innovative [state] programs, ... have the potential to make a difference," but "we can't let Washington off the hook when one in seven Americans is without coverage" (Lavizzo-Mourey, Newark Star-Ledger, 5/2).
  
  
• Wall Street Journal: Treating "free riders" has not "been the major cost driver for private insurance that [Romney] claims it is," a Journal editorial states, adding that the "real cost drivers" are regulations "that unreasonably restrict the freedom of insurers to offer and price coverage." The editorial concludes that if Romney "thinks care for the uninsured is expensive now, wait until Massachusetts taxpayers see how much his government-heavy 'solution' costs" (Wall Street Journal, 5/2).

"Reprinted with permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation . © 2005 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.

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