He can get subsidized coverage through a new high-risk insurance program until 2014.

About 550,000 children are receiving subsidized coverage under the state program, which was expanded after Congress provided more money through the federal Children's Health Insurance Program that passed in 1997.

The needed public subsidy for the subsidized coverage is projected to rise from $50 million in 1994 to $200 million in 1997.

(The poorest residents receive free or subsidized coverage.)

One major reason the costs have gone up in Massachusetts is that a lot more people have signed up for subsidized coverage than expected, partly because of the recession.

Citizens who live in states that opt out of the Medicaid expansion and who qualify for neither existing Medicaid coverage nor subsidized coverage through the states' new insurance exchanges.

For every million people who received fully subsidized coverage, the Government would have to pay at least $2 billion a year.

Medicare Part D provides a private insurance option to allow Medicare beneficiaries to purchase subsidized coverage for the costs of prescription drugs.

Most likely, White House staffers said, the man's employer would pay premiums only for the new family, while the former wife could buy her own, or, if she were poor, get subsidized coverage.

Under the plan, which the airlines approved Thursday, the government would continue to provide subsidized coverage for especially large losses.