If you are in the Insurance Partnership, you will have minor changes to make its provisions mesh with the new law. New lower cost insurance policies can for the first time include high deductibles if they are linked with health savings accounts.

After you go through all the work of determining your requirements, finding insurance and offering it to employees, you have one more step. You and your employees must complete and sign "Health Insurance Responsibility Disclosure" forms under oath. The forms state whether you offer and contribute to insurance and whether your employee has accepted that offer. You are not responsible for any employee who has declined your insurance offering.

Over the coming months, the state will set up the mechanisms to establish the new insurance program. An important first step was the announcement that Jon Kingsdale has agreed to head the Connector Authority. He comes from Tufts Health Plan and is an experienced health insurance strategist, well qualified for the critical setup of operations.

"The devil is in the details," says an old warning, and the health care details are indeed critical to its success. We have come through the many complex steps to arrive where we are today, and I believe our shared commitment to a successful program will carry Massachusetts to this historic achievement.