Health Insurance we could have had

By Michael S. Dukakis November 28, 2004



SIXTEEN YEARS ago, with bands playing and balloons flying, I signed the second universal healthcare bill in America on the steps of the State House. Only the state of Hawaii had beaten us to it.



That bill would have provided comprehensive health insurance for every resident of the Commonwealth. It would have controlled hospital costs. It required all employers with six or more employees to provide their employees and their families with health insurance with a contribution from the employees of up to 20 percent of the total premium. It guaranteed students health insurance while attending college in Massachusetts. It made sure that people who had been laid off from their jobs received health insurance for themselves and their families. And it made special provision for those with the kinds of disabilities that made them virtually uninsurable.

It was approved by the Legislature with one of the broadest political coalitions that had ever been put together on Beacon Hill. The Massachusetts Medical Society supported the bill. So did the hospitals. So did the state nurses' association. So did Health Care for All, the state's principal advocacy group for universal healthcare. So did the unions. And so did most of the state's business community.

That support from the business community had a lot to do with the leadership of a remarkable man named Nelson Gifford. Gifford was the president of Dennison Manufacturing Co. and a member of the state's Business Roundtable. He understood what the healthcare system was doing to the approximately 70 percent of the state's employers who were insuring their employees and their families. Not only were they paying high and growing premiums for their health insurance; those premiums included a hefty surcharge to pay for the cost of free care in emergency rooms and community clinics for people whose employers did not insure them.



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