Sevareid
09-16-2009, 04:53 PM
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BOSTON -- President Barack Obama and his congressional allies have made insuring nearly all Americans a major goal of overhauling the nation's health-care system. One of their toughest challenges will be trying to cover people like Ron Norton of Worcester, Mass.
Mr. Norton, 49 years old, is an adjunct professor at a local community college who earns about $40,000 a year. He's also one of roughly 200,000 Massachusetts residents who remain uninsured despite a state law requiring residents to have health insurance.
"I can't use up all of my savings just to buy mandatory insurance," Mr. Norton says. It's like penalizing "the homeless for refusing to buy a mansion."
As lawmakers hammer out legislation aiming to extend coverage to the country's 46 million uninsured, one of the most sweeping proposals has so far stoked relatively little debate: a requirement that nearly all Americans carry health insurance, much like drivers are required to have car insurance.
All of the major health bills winding through Congress feature a so-called individual mandate similar to the one in Massachusetts. Mr. Obama supported the idea in his speech to Congress last week. Such a mandate, proponents argue, is necessary to keep premiums affordable: The healthy, who are relatively cheap to cover, help pay for the sick.
Subsidies for premiums would help low-income families gain coverage, while the prospect of fines would prod others to buy insurance.
But people like Mr. Norton show how difficult it could be to bring into the insurance pool the millions of consumers who make too much money to qualify for assistance, yet not enough to bear the full cost of new policies on their own.
Three years after Massachusetts's ambitious universal-coverage law went into effect, two-thirds of its previously 600,000 uninsured residents have coverage, according to state data. It has the lowest rate of uninsured in the country -- about 3% according to a state survey, compared with 15% nationwide. But the remainder -- many younger, male and fairly healthy -- has proved tougher to cover.
Costs to expand insurance coverage in the state are growing rapidly because of higher-than-expected enrollment in free and state-subsidized plans, and rising health-care costs. Critics say the Obama plan could face similar problems, contending it doesn't do enough to control costs.
More at: [Only registered and activated users can see links]=todays_us_page_one
BOSTON -- President Barack Obama and his congressional allies have made insuring nearly all Americans a major goal of overhauling the nation's health-care system. One of their toughest challenges will be trying to cover people like Ron Norton of Worcester, Mass.
Mr. Norton, 49 years old, is an adjunct professor at a local community college who earns about $40,000 a year. He's also one of roughly 200,000 Massachusetts residents who remain uninsured despite a state law requiring residents to have health insurance.
"I can't use up all of my savings just to buy mandatory insurance," Mr. Norton says. It's like penalizing "the homeless for refusing to buy a mansion."
As lawmakers hammer out legislation aiming to extend coverage to the country's 46 million uninsured, one of the most sweeping proposals has so far stoked relatively little debate: a requirement that nearly all Americans carry health insurance, much like drivers are required to have car insurance.
All of the major health bills winding through Congress feature a so-called individual mandate similar to the one in Massachusetts. Mr. Obama supported the idea in his speech to Congress last week. Such a mandate, proponents argue, is necessary to keep premiums affordable: The healthy, who are relatively cheap to cover, help pay for the sick.
Subsidies for premiums would help low-income families gain coverage, while the prospect of fines would prod others to buy insurance.
But people like Mr. Norton show how difficult it could be to bring into the insurance pool the millions of consumers who make too much money to qualify for assistance, yet not enough to bear the full cost of new policies on their own.
Three years after Massachusetts's ambitious universal-coverage law went into effect, two-thirds of its previously 600,000 uninsured residents have coverage, according to state data. It has the lowest rate of uninsured in the country -- about 3% according to a state survey, compared with 15% nationwide. But the remainder -- many younger, male and fairly healthy -- has proved tougher to cover.
Costs to expand insurance coverage in the state are growing rapidly because of higher-than-expected enrollment in free and state-subsidized plans, and rising health-care costs. Critics say the Obama plan could face similar problems, contending it doesn't do enough to control costs.
More at: [Only registered and activated users can see links]=todays_us_page_one