Nearly 100,000 Massachusetts taxpayers have been fined for failing to obtain health insurance.
The state's first-in-the-nation universal health insurance law required everyone in the state to be insured by July 2007, except for those who secured a waiver proving they couldn't afford insurance.
A total of $9.7 million in fines was deposited into a trust fund to help cover the cost of the law. Monthly penalties for those who can afford health care but refuse will jump and could total as much as $912 for individuals by December.
Tell me again why this is any of the state's business??
While the politbureau of Massachusetts' Governor, democratic socialist Deval Patrick, crows about how wunderbar it all is, others see this mandatory health insurance as an expensive & ineffective house of cards.
What democratic socialist Gov. Deval Patrick doesn't mention is that four out of five of the newly 'forced' insured are relying heavily on taxpayer subsidies for their coverage.
~60,000 are being declared exempt from the mandate.
~the politbureau of Massachusetts negotiated price controls w/ insurance companies. The predictable result (to everyone but politbureau myrmidons) is rationing. Those insurance companies now must increase co-payments and/or deductibles and/or cut benefits.
~Many of the newly insured say they have trouble finding primary care physicians who will see them.
~Insurance industry polls skew favorable toward 'universal coverage', but the public favors this only if someone else pays.
I guess those people who were polled missed the class on common sense, and there's no such thing as free lunch.
I blame gub'mint schools, natch.
