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Mandating Health Insurance: Would The Massachusetts Plan Work For Maryland?

By Marc Kilmer
Published on Tuesday, January 16, 2007
MARYLAND POLICY REPORT

Recent surveys indicate roughly 16 percent of Maryland’s population has no health insurance. Only 22 states have a greater percentage of their population who lack insurance.[1] This has led to the call for new public policies to extend insurance coverage to the uninsured.  

Some elected officials have looked to Massachusetts as a model for how Maryland should deal with this issue. In 2006, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney pushed through a plan mandating that all residents of Massachusetts have health insurance. The idea animating this bill is to require everyone to have health insurance, and then to use the funds otherwise going to pay the bills of the uninsured to provide these individuals with financial assistance and access to insurance. The plan proposes to accomplish this through the following means:

• Individual Mandate: State residents are required to have health insurance or face the loss of their personal exemption on state taxes.
• Employer Mandate: Employers are mandated to provide health insurance for all of their employees or pay a fine.
• Connector: The state will set up a system to help residents find insurance through a “Connector” that will help the uninsured find insurance policies. This will theoretically lower prices by pooling the uninsured to give them group rates.
• Subsidies for Low-Income Residents: Subsidies will be provided by the government for residents whose income is below 300 percent of the federal poverty level.

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