Health Insurance in MA made compulsary

April 5 (Bloomberg) -- Massachusetts lawmakers approved a first-in-the-nation bill yesterday requiring all residents to have health insurance, a measure Republican Governor Mitt Romney said he will sign.

Under the bill, the state would offer subsidies to private insurers to cover more low-income families. Companies with more than 10 workers that don't offer health insurance to their workers would pay $295 to the state for each worker, money that will be used to subsidize the health insurance of others.

The bill may serve as a model for other U.S. states that are seeking ways to provide health care for the uninsured, said Philip J. Edmundson, chief executive officer of William Gallagher Associates, an insurer. Some 16 percent of Americans are currently without health coverage.

``I don't think we've seen any other state where virtually every Democrat and Republican voted for a measure of this sort,'' said Richard Cauchi, health analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures in Denver, in a telephone interview.

While at least eight other states have bills calling for universal health coverage, Cauchi said, Massachusetts is the first to propose requiring individuals to buy coverage. Residents who can afford insurance and don't purchase it would face income tax penalties after July 2007.

Sharing Responsibility

The state's House of Representatives approved the measure in a 155 to 2 vote. It passed the Senate unanimously. Romney, who is considering a run for president in 2008, will sign the bill into law next week, said his spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom.

``It combines, in a way that's never been attempted or discussed in any other state, joining employee and individual responsibility,'' said John McDonough, executive director of Health Care for All Massachusetts, a Boston-based health advocacy group, in a telephone interview. ``It's combining an individual mandate with an employer mandate.''

The legislation was passed under pressure from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. They said they would cut off about $385 million a year in funding for care of the poor if the state didn't enact reforms by July 1.

`Revolutionary'

The bill follows decades of attempts to reform the state's health-care system. A 1988 law that passed by 2 votes and was signed into law by then-Governor Michael Dukakis was never implemented. Today, of the 6.4 million people in the state, about 500,000 lack insurance.

The bill will help businesses that have been providing health insurance to their workers, said Edmundson, who is chairman of Affordable Care Today, a group that pushed for universal coverage in the state since 2004.

Thomas P. O'Neill, chairman of the board of trustees for Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge and the son of the late speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Tip O'Neill, said Massachusetts, with the legislation, has set the rest of the country on the course for universal health care.

``I think it is revolutionary and I think people are going to pay close attention,'' O'Neill said.