Finance assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 1

Finance - Assignment Example "business mandate." This provision would require most firms to offer employees health insurance about $1,680 per worker annually into a new Health Security Trust Fund created to provide the coverage. Even though implementation of the law has been slower than planned, few want to take away health insurance from the more than 76,000 Massachusetts citizens who have gained coverage since its inception. "We wouldnt have insurance otherwise," said one of those enrollees, Mary Robbins, who had repeatedly tried without success to buy coverage for the small Saugus heating and air conditioning firm she owns and operates with her husband. New estimates from the Department of Medical Security, the agency struggling to implement the program, challenge the prevailing assumption that full implementation of universal health insurance will require additional state funding. A decision to fall back on the old mechanism of paying for care of the uninsured, the states Uncompensated Care Pool, would incur major costs and political liabilities. The costs, covered by a surcharge on all insured citizens hospital bills, have hit $405 million this year and will balloon even more rapidly if ways are not found to chip away at the number of uninsured. The question is where the money will come from: the beleaguered state budget, or businesses and their employees already burdened by high health insurance premiums. For these reasons and more, those who understand the intricacies of health-care financing say there is no way for the state simply to walk away from the problem of finding a way to pay the health costs of the uninsured. Although the 1988 universal health care law, now known as Chapter 23, was closely linked with Gov. Dukakis and his shattered presidential ambitions, the concept has a history that transcends parties and ideologies. While the Governor has yet to detail his health policy plans, he has designated the lieutenant governor-elect as his spokesman on those issues. At the