Next Massachusetts Governor will be responsible for implementing law requiring health insurance coverage

While Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has earned "widespread praise" for the state's "first-of-its-kind" law requiring all state residents to have health insurance by July 2007, the next governor will "shoulder much of the responsibility for whether the law succeeds," the Boston Globe reports.

Judy Meredith, executive director of Boston's Public Policy Institute, said that in order for the law to succeed, the new governor will "have to display leadership" in three areas: "encouraging employers to pay a fair share, encouraging consumers to pay their fair share and encouraging taxpayers to pay their fair share."

According to the Globe, the most "pressing health care challenges the next chief executive will have to face ... [i]nclude implementing the ambitious health insurance law without breaking the state budget."

Although legislators and the Romney administration have planned to pay for the program with state and federal funds and fees from employers who do not provide health insurance, a legislative staff analysis shows that the plan is $160 million short of the projected $1.56 billion cost in the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2008.

Officials hope that they will be able to negotiate more federal aid.

However, according to the Globe, if those funds don't come through, the new governor "will face politically difficult choices," such as whether to raise taxes or cut funding elsewhere.

John McDonough, executive director of Health Care for All, said, "We think the cost of this program will really hit in 2008. The question is going to be how to make [the plan] financially sustainable" (Kowalczyk, Boston Globe, 8/29).

Editorial

"For folks worried about the cost of financing the new health care reform law," recent figures from a state survey and the Census Bureau "should be music to their ears," the Boston Herald wrote in a recent editorial.

The state survey shows a 19% drop in the number of uninsured state residents since 2004, while the federal data report a 17% drop.

According to the Herald, the figures are a "welcome sign of an improving economy" in which more employers are offering health care than was the case two years ago.

The Herald says the statistics also are a sign that the state government's "efforts to track down and enroll every resident eligible for government-financed health insurance have been productive."

However, "some disturbing news amid the good" is that the percentage of uninsured black residents in the state increased from 7.5% to 13.5%, a "troubling figure" that "merits immediate study and attention," according to the editorial (Boston Herald, 8/30).