“Universal” Healthcare: State Admits it Will Have to Exclude Thousands of Poor Seeking Insurance
        The state admitted yesterday that at least five thousand low-income residents will be denied coverage because of insufficient funding. By 2009, that number will swell to 37,000 or more.
        The source of the problem is that there is not enough money to cover everyone. The budget for the plan is capped at $160 million through next June. That is not nearly enough to cover the estimated number of individuals in the lowest income brackets who are expected to apply. The premiums for those low-income individuals are supposed to be subsidized. Now, as real figures are finally being used, the agency is realizing that the legislation cannot realistically deliver on what it has promised for those individuals and families.
        Jon Kingsdale, executive director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, cautioned that the figures were speculative, and fluctuate based on the size of the overall enrollment contribution from low-income people. "The statute provides for the obvious possibility that there might not be sufficient dollars to cover everybody," Kingsdale said during a 3 ½-hour meeting on Beacon Hill.
        He said, "We don't know that we're going to have to cap the program. I want to be very clear about that. The decisions that the board is facing, as well as a lot of unknowns that we're going to have to get some actual experience on, will determine whether or not we exhaust the available funds and have to cap the program."
        Board chairman Thomas Trimarco, Gov. Mitt Romney's secretary of Administration and Finance, believes that the answer is to charge more for those who fall below the poverty guidelines. "I would like to know the percentage of people in that group who have cell phones.“ Trimarco said, later adding that people in that economic stratum should prioritize health care before cable television and cell phones.
        The authority has already postponed enrollment in subsidized coverage by three months, in part due to the delay that Speaker Sal DiMasi has caused because he neglected to pass a bond bill this year before he went to a gala event on taxpayer’s expense to Elvis Presley’s Graceland home in Tennessee.