Sluggish Start for Offer of Tax Credit for Insurance:
"A program offering tax credits to jobless workers to buy health insurance has gotten off to a slow, sputtering start, despite energetic efforts by Bush administration officials who want the program to succeed as a model for a much more ambitious effort to help the uninsured.

The program, the Health Coverage Tax Credit, was created in 2002 to aid workers who lose jobs because of foreign imports.… "

But the results to date are modest, in part because displaced workers are still required to spend substantial amounts of money on insurance premiums before they can get the benefits of the tax credit.

At the end of December, the Bush administration said, only 8,374 workers were receiving tax credits for health insurance under the program. The total number of people taking advantage of the program, including dependents, is perhaps 25,000, or 5 percent of those expected to benefit.…

Under the existing program, tax credits will pay 65 percent of the premium for health insurance bought by a displaced worker. The individual must pay the other 35 percent, and that has proved an insurmountable hurdle for some workers.

"The tax credit would help if the insurance rates were affordable, but the rates were so high that I couldn't afford it," said Gloria J. Craven, 51, of Eden, N.C. "Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina stepped forward to help the textile workers here. But when people started getting price quotes, we realized that we could not pay our share of the premiums."

Mrs. Craven said she and her 61-year-old husband had lost their jobs in a Pillowtex mill where they worked for three decades. She has asthma. He is diabetic and has had a heart attack. Mrs. Craven said the premiums for the insurance offered to them ranged from $1,700 to $5,400 a month. Their share of the premiums would be $595 to $1,890 a month.

The couple, drawing $416 a month in unemployment benefits, was in no position to pay such costs, Mrs. Craven said.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/25/politics/25INSU.html?pagewanted=all&position=