And neither really deal with the current DiMasi-Trav compromise, such as it is:
*Eileen McNamara wonders how the working poor will fare under the eventual bill. These would be the folks most helped by an honest-to-God Medicaid expansion, which Mitt and HHS Secretary (and apparent world-class stat-mangler) Mike Leavitt rule out, because it goes against their free-market fundamentalism.
*Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, one of the main forces behind the MassACT ballot initiative (and with which I have been active), says it still wants to go to the mat with the ballot initiative:
Members of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, a coalition of 65 local religious institutions, and Health Care For All said they would press ahead with the ballot initiative until they were satisfied that the legislative compromise had been enacted and that it represented, in the words of one activist, “a true expansion of healthcare.”
The tough talk raised the prospect of an expensive ballot fight that could pit liberal groups like the interfaith organization against business groups and perhaps tobacco companies. GBIO members have gathered 113,000 signatures for the ballot initiative and said yesterday they would continue mobilizing for an additional 20,000 to ensure the proposal makes the November ballot.
Right now my sympathy is still with GBIO: There’s still an awful lot of happy-talk about getting (or forcing) everyone to be “covered”, i.e. nominally insured, regardless of deductibles or other out-of-pocket costs; but I’m still hearing that the compromise bill will only have a very minor expansion of MassHealth (Medicaid).
We’ll see where this goes, but I smell a ballot battle…
