The new compromise of a $295 levy per uncovered employee could cost Partners a half-million dollars next year — but the company would gain $13 million in increased reimbursements. Whether it will play out as well for smaller providers is less certain.
5) Health-plan providers
Massachusetts Association of Health Plans; Harvard Pilgrim Health Care; Vanguard Health Systems; Tufts Associated Health Plans
2005 lobbying and PAC expenses: $671,434
MAHP president Marylou Buyse — an actual practicing doctor — does not have the long relationships with politicians that Jack Conners and Peter Meade do, but she does represent the groups that actually provide most of the health plans to the state’s residents.
Broadly speaking, Buyse and other plan providers want the state government to offer incentives to push more companies and individuals to purchase health insurance from among the providers in the market. They don’t want the government to expand its own coverage of the uninsured through Medicaid, because any expansion of the government’s role cuts into their own business.
___
Email the author
David S. Bernstein: dbernstein@phx.com
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