Vital statistics

GOVERNOR ROMNEY and Senate President Robert E. Travaglini have proposed health insurance packages to cover half the un--insured people in the state. They rely on incentives rather than mandates that would force businesses to provide coverage or people to buy it. Independent assessments are needed to determine whether a significant number of the uninsured, estimated at between 460,000 and 530,000, will be attracted to these new offerings.

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Romney would establish a ''Commonwealth Care Health Insurance Exchange," which would supervise private insurers as they offer a new product: A high-deductible, high-copay plan that would cost $500 a month for a family of four -- much less than traditional health insurance. Commonwealth Care would be available to people earning up to three times the federal poverty limit, about $55,400 for that four-person family. Premiums could be paid with ''pretax" dollars --money on which no federal taxes would be assessed --reducing the effective cost to perhaps $350 a month.

Travaglini's plan is more wide-ranging. One section would provide $15 million to defray catastrophic costs for people who buy insurance on their own. This money would come from an assessment on large employers who do not offer insurance and whose workers get free care at hospitals. Travaglini hopes that with the state picking up catastrophic costs, the price of insurance would go down. Travaglini would also put $20 million more into subsidies to encourage small businesses to provide insurance.

Even at $350 a month, many people may consider health insurance too expensive, especially if their families do not face major health problems. And a good number of healthy people must sign up if the policies are to be affordable for those with chronic illnesses. Travaglini's $15 million subsidy for catastrophic care would probably not be enough.

A coalition led by the advocacy group Health Care for All has proposed an increase in the cigarette tax and a mandate on all employers to get everyone in the state covered. Romney and Travaglini both reject this mandate, but Travaglini wants to take a look at an individual requirement: Everyone would have to buy health insurance, just as all motorists are required to buy auto insurance.

Academic institutions in the area contain many specialists in healthcare economics. One of them, an MIT economics professor, Jonathan Gruber, has developed a model to assess the cost of health insurance expansions. The Romney and Travaglini proposals will be considered by the Joint Committee on Healthcare Financing, which ought to to call on Gruber or another specialist for analyses of the plans and the mandates. Good intentions need to be supplemented by reliable information.