with tri-square dice.

Governor candidates dispute sharp drop in uninsured residents

By Jean McMillan, Associated Press writer

BOSTON -- The number of people in the Bay State without health insurance has dropped sharply in the past few years, from more than 700,000 people to slightly more than 500,000, acting Gov. Paul Cellucci's administration said yesterday.

But Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, the Democratic nominee for governor, said he doubted the newly released statistics.

Health and Human Services Secretary William D. O'Leary released highlights of a study showing that the number of uninsured has decreased by 26 percent since a state study done in 1995.

The findings indicate that the overall percentage of uninsured in Massachusetts has declined from 11.4 percent to 8.2 percent. The survey was done through phone and in-person interviews.

According to the 1995 study, approximately 11 percent of all children in Massachusetts were uninsured. The study done this year indicated about 5.5 percent are uninsured. O'Leary said he expected that number to continue to decrease as a result of initiatives begun this past summer.

"It seems like it's going in the right direction," O'Leary said. He credited the success to outreach by hospitals, community health centers, mayors and schools.

The 1998 survey, requested by the Legislature, was done by the Center for Survey Research at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. It was based on telephone calls and field visits this year to a random sample of 2,625 homes.

The entire study is to be completed and released in about three weeks. This comes just before the Nov. 3 election, which features the Cellucci and Harshbarger facing off for governor.

Harshbarger has been hammering away at Cellucci this week, saying he has not done enough to provide Bay Staters with affordable health insurance.

In a recent news conference, he pointed to an estimate of 775,000 people uninsured in the state.

Harshbarger said he doubted the new numbers and believed other studies that have put the number higher.

He said the numbers coming from the Cellucci administration on almost any issue are, in his words, "distorted."

And he said the number would be even greater if the Weld-Cellucci administration, which had balked at an increase in the cigarette tax to expand health insurance coverage, had been successful in vetoing the bill.

"I would ask Paul Cellucci ... 'If you could raise the tax on tobacco to pay for expanded health care for kids, would you still veto that?"' he said.

Harshbarger made the comments after holding his own news conference to highlight his proposals to protect elders.

He said he would put an elder advocate in every city and town; extend criminal background checks to nursing homes; and improve access to, and financing for, long-term care services.

The Cellucci campaign said Cellucci and former Gov. William F. Weld, under whom Cellucci served as lieutenant governor, have done much of what Harshbarger is proposing.