Massachusetts' Republican Governor Mitt Romney is making a name for himself nationwide by championing a solution to the health care crisis in his state--a sweeping healthcare reform bill that aims to insure almost every citizen by requiring individuals to buy health insurance if their employers do not.

Governor Romney apparently thinks good health care coverage is good for his state's economy, and good for his presidential ambitions.

Gov. Romney is willing to pay for his new plan by using some of the more than $500 million in federal and state money the state uses now to compensate hospitals for treating the uninsured each year. And instead of using an an anticipated revenue surplus for another tax cut, Romney is willing to earmark the surplus for expanded health coverage.

President Bush is campaigning for a different approach to the problem--high-deductible health insurance policies and tax-free personal health savings accounts. Bush argues that the problem of rising health care costs is because too many people seek medical care without thinking about the costs, so his plan puts more responsibility for health care costs in individuals' accounts.

MIT economist Jonathan Gruber figures that President Bush's fully phased-in Health Savings Account plan would cost about $11.6 billion per year -- $7.1 billion to subsidize premiums and $4.5 billion to subsidize tax-free contributions.

Gruber estimates that only 3.8 million of the 16.6 million benefiting from Bush's policy will be those who were formerly uninsured.

What's more, he estimates that the Bush plan would actually lead to an increase in the number of uninsured because the shift in incentives will lead employers, especially small businesses, to drop health care policies for some 8.9 million employees. As a result, Gruber projects the total number of uninsured persons to rise by about 600,000.

And in the end the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says the President's proposals would provide their largest benefits to wealthy households who can already afford medical care, and would add some $150 billion to the deficit over the next decade.