Romney Elaborates on Health Plan, Compares it to Workfare
By Amy Lambiaso for the State House News Service
       Gov. Mitt Romney on Wednesday compared his proposed health care system that includes an individual mandate to welfare reform, offered an explanation for its impetus, and said his proposal includes provisions to prevent employers from dropping coverage. Romney’s comments came one day after he announced health care reform legislation he will file next month will include a mandate for people to
buy insurance or face financial penalties.
       Speaking to a roundtable of Beacon Hill reporters on the topic, the governor likened his plan to when the state established a work requirement for welfare recipients in the 1990s. “This is bringing workfare to health care by saying, look, personal responsibility is involved,” Romney told reporters. “Everybody has a responsibility for their health care. Either pay your own way or buy insurance.”
       Coupled with a plan to create scaled-back, lower cost products from insurers, Romney believes the administration’s plan would create an environment where everyone in the state not enrolled in government-funded health plans could afford health insurance. Medicaid, the federally subsidized program that offers insurance to the low-income and disabled, would be expanded by $400 million under this plan, he said.
       Romney said he came up with the idea more than two years ago while brainstorming with other top administration aides on how to expand access to affordable health insurance to the more than 500,000 residents currently without it. He first believed universal coverage could only be achieved through instituting an employer mandate or an individual mandate, but wanted to avoid the employer mandate, given its past failure under Gov. Michael Dukakis.
       When his policy team developed a way to offer a low-cost insurance product, Romney decided to pursue an individual mandate, he said. “The last thing I’d do is ask for an individual mandate in today’s environment,” he said. “It makes no sense and would be wrong and unfair.” And answering critics’ claims that an individual mandate could lead some employers to drop their workers from coverage, Romney said his plan would prevent that from happening under state law.
       Federal law currently prohibits employers from dropping lower-income workers from coverage, if those earning a higher wage would be cheaper to cover. Further, he said he believes more employees will opt to offer their workers insurance, given the proposed new product’s affordability. “If you insure one, you insure all,” Romney said. “We have the federal law, we’ll have the state law to protect individuals.”