{"id":1173,"date":"2006-04-05T19:27:07","date_gmt":"2006-04-05T19:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1173"},"modified":"2006-04-05T19:27:07","modified_gmt":"2006-04-05T19:27:07","slug":"just_what_the_d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1173","title":{"rendered":"Just What The Doctor Ordered"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><DIV><SPAN class=049282919-05042006><FONT face=Arial size=2>Massachusetts has <A href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/local\/massachusetts\/articles\/2006\/04\/05\/romney_set_to_sign_bill_to_require_health_insurance_for_all\/\">passed a law to mandate health care coverage for nearly all of its residents<\/A>.&nbsp; As the <A href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/04\/05\/us\/05mass.html?ex=1144382400&#038;en=d30b000a1d0a5efc&#038;ei=5087\">New York Times notes<\/A>, the legislation has elements that should appeal to both sides of the political aisle.&nbsp; Conservatives will like the emphasis on personal responsibility.&nbsp; The bill requires every Massachusetts resident to obtain health insurance by July 1, 2007.&nbsp; Those who can afford health insurance but do not purchase it by the deadline will be subject to a penalty through the state income tax return.&nbsp; Progressives will cheer the expansion of publicly subsidized health care coverage to children and more affordable coverage for people with low to moderate incomes.&nbsp; Private insurance companies will receive subsidies to provide most of the coverage to the 500,000+ uninsured individuals in Massachusetts.&nbsp; <\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/DIV><DIV><SPAN class=049282919-05042006><FONT face=Arial size=2><\/FONT><\/SPAN>&nbsp;<\/DIV><DIV><SPAN class=049282919-05042006><FONT face=Arial size=2>It is said that the states are America&#8217;s laboratories for testing innovative policies.&nbsp; If Massachusetts&#8217; experiment is successful, other states could be convinced of the merits of providing something approximating universal health care coverage for their own residents.&nbsp; And until politicians come to grips with the fact that a single-payer system is the only way to restrain spiraling costs, public-private hybrids like this are probably the next best solution.&nbsp; Of course, the devil is in the details.&nbsp; I don&#8217;t envy the policymakers who will need to decide what services to cover, what the deductibles and co-pays will be, how to assure parity between physical and mental health benefits, and so forth.&nbsp; But it&#8217;s good to see states tackling universal health care while the federal government remains asleep at the wheel.<\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/DIV><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Massachusetts has passed a law to mandate health care coverage for nearly all of its residents.&nbsp; As the New York Times notes, the legislation has elements that should appeal to both sides of the political aisle.&nbsp; Conservatives will like the emphasis on personal responsibility.&nbsp; The bill requires every Massachusetts resident to obtain health insurance by <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=1173' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-iV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}