Senate Takes up Health Bill

Debate over a bill to provide health insurance for every Massachusetts resident by 1992 got off to a shaky start because of parliamentary wrangling.

In fact, the senate took no action on the bill itself yesterday and was to take up 29 proposed amendments to the massive bill today.

As debate opened, the Democratic leadership sought to quickly bring the measure to the floor, one day after the Senate Ways and Means Committee endorsed the bill in an unusual Sunday session.

Suspension Debate

The Senate spent hours debating the suspension of rules that would allow full debate on the bill. Over repeated objections by Republicans, the Senate voted along party lines, 29-7 and 29-8, to bypass the rules and take up immediate consideration of the bill.

Republican leaders charged the Democrats were trying to win passage of the bill to help the presidential campaign of Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.

"It is not the governor's bill, but let me tell you at every street corner in America he will declare it as his bill," Senate Assistant Minority Leader David Locke said in a floor speech to block swift consideration of the bill.

"This has got to be the most blatant attempt to arm the governor with more campaign tools," the Wellesley Republican said.

Edward L. Burke, Senate chairman of the joint Health Care Committee, acknowledged Dukakis was late in latching onto the universal health care issue.

"This bill, the spirit behind it, comes from the Legislature," the Framingham Democrat said, nothing his committee considered the proposal as early as 1986.

But Burke sharply disagreed with Locke's view that presidential politics was driving the issue, which passed the House two weeks ago.

Burke said prompt consideration was needed "to secure funding for hospitals and to provide funding for some 600,000 individuals across the state who now have no insurance."

Besides providing for a first-in-the-nation plan to begin health care coverage for those 600,000 uninsured in Massachusetts, the proposal would renew a hospital financing law that expired Oct. 1. The health care bill contains about $1 billion in allowable revenue increases for the state's 106 acute-care hospitals over the next four years.