The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 25

CityRegion News New England News Briefs B2 Starts Stops B2 Bird Sightings B9 This Day in History B9 (Ditty A24 B3 B6 Weather Campus Insider Deaths Boston Sunday Globe March 5, 2006 Eileen McNamara (g(gJDDD BY MICHAEL LEVENSON, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT Needs should guide reform Healthcare reform is not about Salvatore 17 FliMaci nr "RrVhprt V. Travaglini. It is not li t. Mil c.i 4 terestsot Peter Meade, Jack Connors, and Michael Widmer. It is a positive step that the House speak rr WOONSOCKET, R.I.

He smiled at neighbors, sculpted himself at Power Shack Gym, and worked in a paper mill. Nights meant beers at Box Seats, the local sports bar, or spinning tunes as "Jazzy Jeff," a karaoke backed by his buddy, "Crazy Scott." In Woonsocket, a blue-collar mill city of cheap furniture stores, neon tattoo parlors, and old-time lunch counters, Jeffrey S. Mailhot fit in like family. Chevy Blazer, buzz cut, and a love for the Rolling Stones: A nice guy, they all said. All the while, he was killing women in his living room.

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so i BILL GREtNEGLOBt STAFF er and Senate president are moving toward providing coverage for some of the more than 500,000 uninsured in Massachusetts. It is encouraging that some business leaders are acknowledging their responsibility to share the cost. But could we hold the laurel wreaths? Where is the comprehensive plan to expand eligibility for MassHealth to those not now covered by the state's Medicaid program and to subsidize care for the working poor? Where is the plan to pay for it? No reasonable person thinks access to healthcare can be expanded without requiring the participation of all of society's stakeholders taxpayers, businesses, and the individuals themselves. The $295 per worker that negotiators are said to have agreed to assess businesses with 10 or more employees that do not offer health insurance is not going to help Joseph and Gisele Landais of Dorchester, or tens of thousands like them who earn too much to qualify for MassHealth but too little to afford the insurance plan offered by their employers. The Landais family knows something about the healthcare system.

Joseph, 64, is a retired hospital janitor. Gisele works two jobs at area nursing homes. Even without the cost of health insurance, it is a struggle to provide for their three children. For weeks, the preoccupation of players on Beacon Hill has been how to placate businesses that do not want to pay their share of expanding coverage to the uninsured. The sense of urgency has been driven, not by the moral imperative to provide a basic human need, but by the threat that the federal government might withhold Medicaid funds to penalize the state for failing to reduce the rolls of the uninsured.

The doomsday prophets at the Mas-sachusetts High Technology Council who warned on Friday that requiring businesses to help shoulder the cost would inhibit job growth ignore the economic impact of doing nothing. Last month, the state Office of Health and Human Services reported that the government spent $213 million during the 2005 fiscal year in healthcare costs for 160,000 workers and their families through MassHealth and the free care provided by hospitals. Some of their employers offer health insurance, but at a price that is often prohibitive for low-wage earners, wage earners like Gisele Landais. Is it any surprise that Wal-Mart ranked first among employers with more than 50 workers with the greatest number of employees who depend on free care? Retail giants, fast-food outlets, even chain pharmacies and major Boston healthcare providers made the list, including hospitals that are in the Partners Healthcare System. Connors, who with Meade, the vice president of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and Widmer, the president of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, helped craft the outlines of a deal last week, is president of Partners.

Joseph and Gisele Landais were not invited behind closed doors on Beacon Hill to help hammer out a plan that might guarantee coverage for their family. The political and corporate insiders are understandably wary of those most in need; the poor generally do not share their reverence for incremental progress. "I lost my health insurance when I retired," said Joseph, who did not need the coverage until last year when a triple hernia required surgery and he had to rely on the hospital's free care. "All those years I worked, I never got sick." They don't know how they will pay for it, but the couple has decided Gisele must sign up for her employer's pricey health insurance plan, just for herself. "What would we do if my wife got sick and she could not work?" asked Joseph.

It is a question that House and Senate conferees ought to keep at the forefront of their deliberations on healthcare THE SCENE Jeffrey S. Mailhot brought women to his apartment in this house near downtown Woonsocket, where he killed and dismembered them. THE VICTIMS BETWEEN FEBRUARY 2003 and July 2004, Mailhot strangled three young women, dismembered them with a saw, tossed their remains in trash bags, and threw them in dump-sters. Authorities say he would have continued killing, had he not met Jocelin Martel, a 27-year-old brunette he picked up on the pitted streets where he trawled for victims. Now, as Mailhot, one of the worst serial killers in Rhode Island history, begins a long prison sentence, people are calling Martel, a prostitute with a history of drug addiction, a hero.

As everyone from the attorney general to the lunch crowd at Simply the Best Bakery on Court Street hails the end of Mailhot's bloody reign, Martel has emerged as the unlikeliest of hometown saviors. Mailhot, 35, had never had so much as a parking ticket when he began killing women. A WOONSOCKET, Page B4 iWHMQIMM mammmmmatmmmmmmmmm A A Stacie K. Goulet Age 24 Killed July 2004 Christine C. Dumont Age 42 Killed April 2004 Audrey L.

Harris Age 33 Killed February 2003 Rirl nnrp in rnma I ii said to eat again A nurse told the mother of Haleigh Poutre during a hospital visit last week that the once-comatose Westfield girl has been able to eat soft foods and has tapped out rhythms during physical therapy, according to the mother's lawyer. B3 Mourners hear of victim's deeds Stories of Imette St. Guillen's kindness and good nature moved those who paid their respects yesterday to the 24-year-old Boston native who was found slain last month in Brooklyn. B3 Families to watch Moussaoui trial When federal prosecutors argue tomorrow that Zacari-as Moussaoui should be executed for his connection to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror 9' Mass.

groups back ballot initiative on universal healthcare By Michael Levenson GLOBE CORRESPONDENT Backers of universal health insurance yesterday refused to throw their support behind a compromise to expand coverage that is emerging in the Legislature unless the plan becomes law, and vowed to continue pushing for a far costlier 2006 ballot initiative that would hike cigarette and payroll taxes to bring healthcare to all in Massachusetts. Members of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, a coalition of 65 local religious institutions, and Health Care For All said they would press ahead with the ballot initiative until they were satisfied that the legislative compromise had been enacted and that it represented, in the words of one activist, "a true expansion of healthcare." The tough talk raised the prospect of an expensive ballot fight that could pit liberal groups like the interfaith organization against business groups and perhaps tobacco companies. GBIO members have gathered 113,000 signatures for the ballot initiative and said yesterday they would continue mobilizing for an additional 20,000 to ensure the proposal makes the November ballot. "This really is about a substantial expansion of healthcare if that's what this is, the people will applaud," said Rabbi Jonah Pesner, a GBIO leader, reflecting on the healthcare compromise emerging in the Legislature. "If this doesn't reach that substantia expansion of access, the peo- HEALTHCARE, Paga B5 Li SUIT'S 11 LVr- la a ED COLLIER FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE STbST FUN AND GAMES Special Olympian Mark Polaski, live on closed-circuit tried- 51, raced at Wachusett Mountain yesterday.

More sion in the federal court- than 2,000 athletes and coaches took part in events house, bs in and around Worcester this weekend. Eileen McNamara is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at mcnamaraglobe.com..