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Editorial - Going national
Candidates may learn from Massachusetts’ experience Publication: Telegram & Gazette July 9, 2007...With a year and a half remaining before Election Day, the presidential campaign has tended to meander into such trivialities as car-top dog carriers and $1,200 haircuts. However, 13 years after the Clinton administration health care initiative collapsed under its own weight, coverage for uninsured Americans appears to be moving up on the agenda. As the presidential contenders grope for a workable formula, Massachusetts, with its fledgling insurance law, may well serve as their laboratory. Driving the state and national debates are the skyrocketing health care costs and insurance premiums that price many people out of the market. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports the cost of family coverage is up 87 percent since 2000. Predictably, the number of uninsured Americans has soared as well, from 37 million in the mid-1990s to 45 million today. The national candidates of both parties agree that reducing costs and insuring everyone — or at least most of those currently uninsured — are vital goals, but details of how to achieve them and how to pay for it are vague. While the Massachusetts formula offers guidance, the law remains a work in progress. Getting low- or no-income residents into free or heavily subsidized policies last fall went reasonably well, but a six-month grace period had to be added to the July 1 deadline for mandatory coverage. Riding herd on the insurance companies is a major challenge in Massachusetts that any national plan must address. When the proposals for “affordable” policies came in, some cost hundreds of dollars more than the target of $200 to $250 a month. Now, affordability is an issue again in the wake of a decision by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts to offer policies to employers who pay only one-third of the cost (instead of the minimum of one-half before July 1). State Sen. Richard T. Moore, a leading architect of the new law, is right to be concerned that fewer workers will be able to afford coverage. If there has been a single factor that has enabled Massachusetts to progress as far as it has, it is that state leaders were willing to work across party and ideological lines to balance the interests of all stakeholders, including hospitals, physicians, insurance companies, employers, health care consumers and, yes, taxpayers. Presidential candidates, please take note. |