Insurance Required Of All Residents, but Funding Isn’t Final

But, even amid the pomp, the bloom on Massachusetts’s first-of-its-kind policy was wearing off. Some observers have charged that the plan promises a huge array of low-cost, state-subsidized health-insurance policies for the uninsured to buy — but provides few details about how this will be done.

Specifically, the bill leaves much of the detailed work of creating these policies, including setting premiums, co-payments and the required state subsidies, to a “Connector” agency now being created.

That has left state officials with only a rough guess as to how much the system will cost — perhaps $600 million — and how much government will have available to pay. The money is supposed to be drawn from funds that are now used to pay for free care for the uninsured, a total estimated by the state at $1 billion.

Alan Sager, a professor at Boston University’s School of Public Health, said this week that this kind of financial estimation isn’t good enough for a project with such high stakes.

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