The Michigan Daily

State lawmakers could be forced to pass legislation that requires every Michigan resident has access to health care coverage, which would make Michigan the second state in the country to implement such a plan.

A proposed ballot initiative, called Health Care for Michigan, would amend the state's constitution to require lawmakers to ensure every resident has "comprehensive and affordable health care coverage through a fair and cost effective financing system."

If passed, the proposal would allow the state to make sure residents have health insurance through "public or private measures." The proposal does not set a deadline for lawmakers to enact a health care coverage mandate.

The Health Care for Michigan Campaign committee is circulating a petition to add the proposal to the November ballot.

The petition needs 380,126 signatures to get on the ballot, and organizers say it has garnered about 100,000 so far.

If the proposal is added to the ballot and a majority of voters support a constitutional amendment, Michigan residents would be required to have access to both preventative and primary care. Currently, Massachusetts is the only other state to requiere its residents have health insurance, having passed a mandate in 2006.

Frank Houston, deputy director of the campaign committee, said the initiative would push the Michigan Legislature to reform what he called a "broken health care system," but wouldn't require a specific policy.

"The purpose of this initiative is to create a little more urgency to this situation," he said.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Lt. Gov. John Cherry, both Democrats, have endorsed the proposal.

Bob Winfield, director of University Health Services, said the initiative would primarily benefit University students from Michigan who had inadequate health care coverage or none at all.

"For out-of-state students, I don't think this would have an impact," said Winfield.

Five percent of all undergraduates and 10 percent of all graduate students have no health insurance Winfield said. He said he wasn't sure how many out-of-state students were uninsured.

Earlier this month, Winfield spoke in support of the Michigan Student Assembly's resolution asking University administrators to consider requiring all students to have health insurance.

The University's insurance plan costs $2,183 per year. A decade ago, the same plan cost only $621.

MSA Vice President Arvind Sohoni, who chaired MSA's Health Issues Commission last year and supports a health care requirement for University students, said he also supports adding a health care coverage mandate to the state's constitution.

"It kind of comes from the same school of thinking that uninsured people are at a big disadvantage," Sohoni said. "The goal is to reduce the cost. With more healthy people, costs will go down."

Though he supports putting the initiative on the ballot, Sohoni said he was concerned that the proposed language lacks a specific policy.

Marjorie Mitchell, a Health Care for Michigan campaign committee member, said the committee wants to pressure the Michigan Legislature to develop a plan, she said. The state's constitution, she said, isn't the place to draft specific legislation.

"We don't have a specific plan that we are promoting," she said. "We are promoting a set of principles which we think makes sense in the health care reform debate for the people of Michigan."

The proposal doesn't specify a time period for legislators to draft a statewide health care plan, but if the process took longer than two years, Mitchell said, the committee "might need to put some more pressure on."

Brady Smith, chair of the University's chapter of College Republicans, said the initiative was unnecessary and probably wouldn't be effective if implemented. He said he was wary of giving lawmakers a broad mandate that doesn't guarantee that care would be high-quality and affordable.

"It doesn't have any real teeth to it," Smith said. "This is binding legal language and that'd be a nightmare for the courts to try to enforce."

Smith said he plans to evaluate the proposal with members of the College Republicans before his group takes a stance on the initiative.

LSA sophomore Nathaniel Eli Coats Styer, chair of the University's chapter of College Democrats, said his organization has gathered about 200 signatures for the petition at group meetings and from students in Mason Hall.

"It's a great, positive movement forward for universal health care in the state of Michigan," Styer said. "We look forward to campaigning for it in November if it gets on the ballot."

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