Massachusetts healthcare bill pushes businesses to provide coverage.

Byline: Scott S. Greenberger

Nov. 30--Smokers would pay an extra 50 cents for a pack of cigarettes in Massachusetts, and Bay State employers would be required to offer healthcare coverage to their workers under legislation unveiled yesterday by a key state senator.

The bill proposed yesterday by Senator Richard T. Moore, cochairman of the Legislature's Committee on Health Care, stakes out ground held by many liberal healthcare advocates, who say that covering everybody in Massachusetts is impossible without spending more money and requiring employers to provide health coverage.

To push businesses to provide coverage, Moore would levy what he calls a "health access assessment" on employers who do not offer health plans to their workers. He also called for state subsidies to help small businesses and low-income people pay for coverage.

"This is a concrete package that will lead to a major expansion in coverage and a lowering of cost for employers providing coverage now, and it will get state government back in the business of leading the healthcare system to lower costs and better quality," said John McDonough of Health Care for All, which helped develop the bill. As a state representative, McDonough helped to spearhead Beacon Hill's last major healthcare initiative, a bill to extend coverage to more children, in the mid-1990s.

However, Governor Mitt Romney and Senate President Robert E. Travaglini have rejected so-called employer mandates and new state spending. Yesterday, Romney's spokeswoman said the Republican governor opposed the proposed tax increase and mandate on employers.

In 1988, the last time Massachusetts approved an employer mandate, the Legislature approved a bill that would have charged businesses $1,680 per worker and excluded firms with fewer than six workers. That plan, pushed through the Legislature by Governor Michael S. Dukakis, was scuttled by Dukakis's successor, William F. Weld. Today, only Hawaii has an employer mandate.