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Mass. weighs health insurance minimum payments

Massachusetts officials are grappling to come up with how much lower-income residents should have to pay for insurance under the state’s landmark health care reform law that requires citizens to procure coverage.

Health care advocates said anyone living at or slightly above the annual federal poverty level – earning about $9,800 a year, or about $816 a month, for a single adult – should be exempt from monthly health care premiums. But the Romney administration says that adults should pay at least $20 or $25 a month for health insurance.

Many people in that income group have cell phones and cable television and should be able to contribute more for their health care, maintains Romney budget chief Thomas Trimarco. “Those two items are probably $100 a month. I bet 90 percent of this group has both those, what I consider discretionary items,” Trimarco told The Associated Press. “And that comes ahead of your health care? No. It’s not a right message.”

However, John McDonough, executive director of Health Care for All, said most people living at or near the poverty level have no disposable income. “They don’t have cell phones and they are living under crushing debt,” he said. “They are overestimating what a family can afford.”

The state is supposed to start offering new subsidized health care plans to the poorest residents in October. John McDonough, executive director of Health Care for All, speaks at a public hearing on health care minimums in Boston. (AP Photo/Celina Fang)