Healthy businesses and healthy workers

MASSACHUSETTS HAS set an example for the rest of the country by taking bold steps to provide quality health coverage for everyone. Now it's time for Washington to do the same by bringing meaningful, affordable healthcare to the uninsured -- in Massachusetts and across America.

In Massachusetts there's still a major obstacle in the overall goal of universal coverage: cost. The problem of the uninsured can't be solved unless the issue of skyrocketing health costs to families and businesses is also tackled.

Fully reforming the healthcare system will require that the federal government begin shouldering some of the burden to help alleviate costs. One percent of patients account for a quarter of healthcare costs. By the same token, 2 out of 10 patients account for more than 80 percent of all healthcare costs. . To make healthcare more affordable, there must be a better way to share the immense burden of insuring the chronically ill and seriously injured.

Part of the reason that businesses and health plans today fail to cover their workers is an aversion to risk -- a fear that they will be saddled with a sick employee whose high premiums will bankrupt them. Take a small business with just five employees, for example. If one worker has a major heart attack, the cost of care for the other four shoots up, potentially causing the company to drop health coverage entirely.

But there's a way to combat these costs. And Washington should make employers and healthcare plans an offer they can't refuse.

It's called "reinsurance." Reinsurance means that if employers agree to offer all their workers preventative care and quality coverage, then the federal government will reimburse them for a significant portion of the costs of their chronically ill employees.

It's simple: If the federal government can help small and large businesses bear the burden of cost in the most expensive cases, we'll dramatically improve the health of everyone.

This week, I will introduce the Healthy Businesses, Healthy Workers Reinsurance Act, a bill that will make government a partner in helping businesses with the heavy financial burden of those catastrophic cases: those that use over $50,000 in a single year in healthcare costs.

Healthy Businesses, Healthy Workers will protect business owners from skyrocketing premiums, and provide more working families affordable, quality healthcare.

With reinsurance, health insurance premiums for all of us will go down -- by approximately 10 percent under this plan.

In Massachusetts, this plan would cover not only those receiving insurance through their employer, but also those in the new Commonwealth Connector. Plans offered in the Connector are dramatically less expensive. With a reinsurance mechanism in place, individuals inside and outside the Connector can expect premiums to go down.

With Massachusetts serving as a national model, we must take this next crucial step: building a common-sense partnership between employers, families, and the government to share the costs of the sickest among us.

In short, reinsurance will ensure that the Massachusetts model is as sustainable as it is innovative.

This will lay the groundwork for achieving our ultimate goal: healthcare coverage for every single American.

John F. Kerry is a US senator from Massachusetts.