Governor Mitt Romney

The Boston Globe reports that Jon Kingsdale, an executive with Tufts Health Plan, is the most likely candidate to lead the organization charged with heading insurance reform in Massachusetts. Kingsdale is currently a senior vice president of policy development at Tufts. Kingsdale would head the Health Insurance Connector, the state-run organization charged with implementing Gov. Mitt Romney's reform plan. Under Romney's widely-praised proposal, all residents would be required to …

> Massachusetts lawmakers overrode Gov. Mitt Romney's veto of several provisions of the state's new health law. Article

> CalPers became the latest voice to apply pressure on United Health Group on the timing of its option-grants for executives. …

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) signed into law legislation requiring that all state residents purchase health insurance. In a key development, Romney vetoed a provision which requires employers with more than nine employees to pay a $295 per employee penalty for failing to provide insurance to their workers. Romney, who is aiming at the Republican nomination in 2008, said he made the move in response to complaints from small business owners. The state's overwhelmingly Democratic …

The intellectual food fight in the nation's editorial and Op-Ed pages over Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's plan to reform healthcare shows no signs of slowing down. On Monday, Romney defended the plan in a piece for The Wall Street Journal. Romney argued that many people simply refuse to buy coverage. "Why? Because it is expensive and because they know that if they become seriously ill, they will get free or subsidized treatment at the hospital. Why pay for …

It was a foregone conclusion that the official essay topic in the nation's editorial pages this weekend would be the great Massachusetts healthcare experiment. And it is. "Massachusetts will fail," argues Sally Pipes of the conservative think tank PRI in USA Today. "The end result of Massachusetts' "innovative" plan will be a total government takeover of healthcare."

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It's safe to say that the drive for universal insurance in Massachusetts is likely to remain a top story in healthcare news this week. Gov. Mitt Romney's plan to reform the state's health insurance industry is a front page story on newspapers across the country and generating vigorous debate in the nation's Op-Ed pages.

The Boston Globe follows up on yesterday's developments with a pair of new reports. The first notes that premiums under the new Massachusetts law may be a …

Massachusetts lawmakers voted in for a major health reform bill, making the state the first in the nation to require citizens to purchase insurance. Gov. Mitt Romney (R), who has publicly campaigned for the measure, is expected to sign the bill into law. Supporters say the "hybrid" approach to guaranteeing healthcare, which mandates individuals to buy coverage and uses taxpayer funds for subsidies for the poor, could serve as a model for a national system. The law requires employers with …

Across the nation, liberal and conservative governors are pursuing very different approaches to controlling rising healthcare costs and providing coverage to the growing ranks of the uninsured. In Florida, Gov. Jeb Bush (R) is talking empowerment for low-income seniors and moving thousands from state-run Medicaid programs to managed care plans. A similar experiment is underway in South Carolina. In Illinois, Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) is taking a diametrically different approach to the same …

> Spiraling costs leave government with little choice but to intervene in healthcare. However, the lessons of Medicare Part D suggest that there is a right and a wrong way to do it, argues Highmark CEO Kenneth Melani. Article

> "Crimeware" programs that secretly log user keystrokes are set to become the most serious computer security issue, according to The New York Times. That, of course, is …

More than 15 years after Mike Dukakis' failed attempt to extend universal healthcare in Massachusetts, the state is looking seriously at the issue again. Republican Gov. Mitt Romney is pushing for an individual mandate to buy health insurance that would cost would between $140 and $320 a month for a high-deductible plan. The Democratic controlled state House has passed a "pay or play" plan that includes a tax on employers which Romney opposes. The goal is to extend insurance to …