Massachusetts health care reform plan extends health insurance to part-time employees and the unemployed

Romney believes his plan will allow about 168,000 of the state's quarter million uninsured citizens to afford private insurance. The new insurance offerings would cost around $200 per month for individuals, compared with $350 to $500 for current plans. Insurance plans would also be paid for with pre-tax dollars, making the effective cost between $134 and $160.

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• Hospitals, insurers, and business groups are rallying behind Beacon Hill leaders' efforts to expand healthcare coverage, praising Governor Mitt Romney and Senate President Robert E. Travaglini for unveiling plans yesterday that would achieve that goal in large part by allowing insurance companies to offer less expensive policies with scaled-back benefits.
• Peter Meade, executive vice president of Blue Cross/Blue Shield, described the day as ''a great beginning," and Bill Vernon of the National Federation of Independent Business said, ''Trusting the market to provide flexibility and choice of products is critical to solving the healthcare crisis in our state."
• ''Giving employers and consumers more choices to determine the products that best meet their healthcare needs and fit within their financial means, as both approaches do, will go a long way towards reducing the number of uninsured in the Commonwealth," said Dr. Marylou Buyse, president of the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans.
• Neither Romney nor Travaglini would require businesses to provide coverage to their workers, a step that many healthcare advocates and specialists believe is necessary to cover the roughly 460,000 to 530,000 people without coverage in Massachusetts.
• ''While we respect the ideas that are being put forward, the notion that this is going to lead to everyone getting covered by January 2009 is not realistic," McDonough said, referring to Romney's prediction that his plan would do just that.
• Later in the day, the Senate president briefed about two dozen insurance and hospital executives in his State House office.
• The governor insists that about 168,000 of the half-million or so uninsured Bay State residents could afford private insurance if premiums were lowered.
• His plan would alter state rules to allow insurers to offer policies for individuals with monthly premiums of about $200, compared with the current average of between $350 and $500.