LIBERTY (April 21): The state that went overwhelmingly for George McGovern and gave us Michael Dukakis, the Gnome of Nothingness; that had a senior legislator who was the brother of a leading public enemy and crime-boss killer who ordered a hit as casually as one might decide to floss; and that spent years on the Big Dig, the fantastically expensive new tunnel under the city that leaks like a sieve, has now jumped forward with a real effort to solve the health insurance problem facing the entire nation.

In a truly bipartisan effort, Republican Gov. Mitt Romney recently signed a new law, coming from a legislature controlled by Democrats, which mandates that everyone in the state will have to have health insurance. If they cannot afford it, they will be subsidized.

Unfortunately, the governor line-item vetoed the part that would have required companies with more than 10 employees to pay $295 per employee if they did not provide some form of suitable coverage to their employees. Still, Massachusetts has taken a very big step.

So, who is unhappy? Lo and behold, the liberals are up in arms and the conservatives offer broad approval. The liberals call it an unacceptable mandate, telling the people what to do -- imagine that. The folks to the right say great; everyone will have to chip in and take responsibility for their lives.

It is a step in the direction of a uniform offering of health insurance, tied to age and need, but freeing the public at large from having to pay for those who choose to ride for free and then moan loudest when catastrophe, very possibly based upon their own lifestyle choices, hits.

But semiseriously, can you believe that this level of smarts is coming from a place that sends us speeding, stop-sign defying, carloads of louts every summer and hunting season? Can you believe that those from the Bay State who swagger up here and dump their trash (along with our select locals) are thinking straight?

What does Gov. Baldacci say and where is an astute comment from his health-care czarina Trish Riley? So far, blessed silence, except to tell Mainers to live right. But that will change when the governor realizes the Massachusetts thugs have upstaged him.

The plan for Massachusetts is by no means the proverbial slam dunk. The state figures it will have to put up only an additional $125 million with the rest coming from premiums and existing federal- or state-funded health-care efforts.

Just working from the population differences, however, and knowing that the summer visitors look no more healthy, fit or trim than our folks, a straight-line comparison comes to an additional cost to Maine of about $20 million. Thus it would provide coverage for the entire state of Maine, as opposed to the sucking Dirigo vacuum that costs well north of $50 million a year, while covering fewer than 10,000 people.

How can the blockheads in Massachusetts do it? It makes health care a mandatory personal budget item, such as auto insurance, just as it should be for every citizen. They do not intend to do a one-size-fits-all policy, and they will permit people to choose a soup-to-nuts policy or one that offers less.

It will also draw competing insurance companies. Massachusetts already has 15 active in the state, unlike Maine, where the large companies, by and large except for Anthem, have effectively gone away.

These companies will craft every manner of competing policy and it will be confusing to figure it out. But just as everyone screamed about the new Medicare Part D that was poorly implemented, all will become clear, as it has with Medicare Part D, which will save most seniors 50 percent of their total pharmaceutical bill going forward.

So there is something for everybody, and everybody will ante up what they can -- or choose -- to afford. They will also be able to do it with before-tax dollars, and they will be fined if they do not comply. Private industry will have to compete, and compete they will, to get into the act.

Massachusetts — the liberal hothouse of the East Coast if not the nation — is being far smarter than the Baldacci-led socialistically conceived program that he claims will make Maine the healthiest state in the union.

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