Massachusetts Adopts Universal Mandatory Private Health Insurance Plan

Ronald Bailey | April 5, 2006

Massachusetts will require all of its citizens to buy private health insurance and subsidize those too poor to afford it. The Massachusetts plan incorporates features of a proposal for mandatory universal private insurance I made a while back. One feature that seems to be lacking in the Massachusetts legislation is rolling Medicaid and SCHIP monies into vouchers that allow the poor to select the private health insurance coverage they want. Of course, the devil is in the details, but ideally by experimenting with various health insurance systems on a state by state basis, the rest of the country can learn what works and what doesn't. Still, this could be a way to avoid national single payer government provided health insurance, a.k.a. completely socialized medicine.