Universal health coverage in Massachusetts
Has anyone heard about the new mandatory "universal" health coverage in Massachusetts?(it's not that new, as it went into effect last year) What are your opinions on this? I am strongly opposed to this!
Basically, universal health coverage in MA means that all legal MA residents will be obligated to purchase health insurance if they are not already covered by their employer and/or guardian. If they neglect to do so, then they will be charged a penalty on their state income taxes. So basically, independent contractors(such as dancers) or people that are underemployed/unemployed will have to dish out money of their own pockets for this. I do not like the idea that the gov't can essentially "obligate" someone to buy something that they either don't want or cannot adequately afford.
Sure, there are state subsidy programs to provide healthcare for lower income individuals. But what about the people that fall into the loopholes for qualifying for state-paid healthcare? For example, a retail employee who might earn slightly above the cut-off for qualifying for state healthcare, but does not receive insurance from their work. (There are many jobs that do not provide employee healthcare benefits; even grocery store chains such as Super Fresh do not attempt to provide healthcare until you work there for 1.5yrs) That person would be in an income bracket where he/she can just barely take care of him/herself independently(i.e., living paycheck to paycheck). One unexpected expense or devastating event(e.g., a house fire, getting sued by someone, theft or ID theft, or even having an asshole boyfriend/girlfriend screwing them out of money such as what happened to Xiomara, etc) could put them in a situation where they cannot adequately afford to purchase their own, but their taxable income is slightly too high to qualify for state healthcare. I know that these people are more of the exception than the norm, but the point is, these kinds of people exist. Plus, MA already has some of the highest individual insurance costs in the country.
I've been there before...When I first started dancing, I was making decent money, but I had so much debt and other immediate expenses, that I held off on getting health insurance until I had some of my other expenses paid. I had to pay for stuff such as traffic tickets(or else I'd get a bench warrant!), car repairs, and obtaining safe reliable transportation so that I could get to work. Even though it would have been better if I had health coverage, not having to pay for health coverage made things easier for me. And at the time, I was generally pretty healthy so it wasn't a dire need for me(I know, I know...you think you don't need health insurance, and then something catastrophic occurs). Yeah I was putting myself at risk for much bigger bills if something catastrophic had happened, but it was MY choice to opt out of paying for my own health insurance. Shouldn't paying for insurance be a choice?
Europe has universal health coverage, but the difference is, that the gov't provides it. In Massachusetts however, the state is obligating people to buy insurance out of their own pocket if they do not get covered by their employer or other person/entity.
Meanwhile, this new policy is not addressing the high rip-off costs that the pharmaceutical and insurance companies are charging. If anything, it is encouraging the insurance companies to keep charging their sky-high prices, because now health insurance is mandatory so more people will have to purchase it. The new policy is helping out the "extremely wealthy" health insurance executives more than anyone else! Also, this policy is not doing much to encourage employers to start offering health benefits and/or better health benefits. If an employer neglects to provide employee health insurance, then they will be penalized $295 per employee per year. That $295 per employee is a lot less than the average annual cost of health benefits per employee. So this $295 penalty fee per employee isn't enough to convince cheap companies to start providing healthcare. Basically it is helping out the big businesses more than the vulnerable uncovered individuals, and if there are any penalties to the businesses, it is still more attractive than healthcare costs.
One such argument is that car insurance is mandatory, so why shouldn't health insurance? Well here's why: Because you only need car insurance if you opt to drive a car, and driving is NOT mandatory! Driving is a "privledge," not a right. If you cannot afford car insurance, then simply do not drive. But unlike driving, living is a "right." Why should we be forced to pay for something that aides us in our "right" to live healthy? I'm not saying that we should expect the gov't to pay this for us(although my staunchly Democrat friend Bob will disagree with me)...I'm just saying that the gov't shouldn't neglect to pay healthcare for people above the income cut-off, AND force them to pay for it on their own.
I can somewhat understand why the MA gov't wants everyone to be insured. More insured people means more chance that they will visit the doctor when they are sick, thus being able to recover quicker(or recover at all), so that they do not infect other people. Less sick people helps out businesses and work attendance records in general. Plus, there are some uninsured people who will utilize a doctor's services, and then stiff the doctor on the bill. These unpaid bills can result in doctors raising their prices even more to compensate for the unpaid bills, which can result in insurance companies raising their rates to compensate for having to possibly pay the doctors more money for the insured services. But again, those things help out the big businesses more than the little guy! I'm not saying that it is fair for doctors to get stiffed by cash-paying uninsured patients...for example, I hated it enough when a customer stiffed me on a lapdance once before. But I don't think that forcing people to buy health insurance(or else getting a tax penalty) is the answer either.
If they are going to penalize individuals on their taxes for not maintaining health insurance coverage, then they should make it a two-way street. Such as limiting the prices that doctors or insurance companies should charge, and putting more regulation on these big health-related businesses. But this policy is doing nothing to convince the insurance companies to be more consumer-friendly. Personally, I am not a big fan of gov't intervention on businesses, but if the businesses are allowed to keep overcharging consumers for insurance(c'mon, look at how much profit the bigwigs such as WellPoint and United make each year!), then us little guys should not be forced to buy their products. If this was true capitalism, then the businesses would be allowed to charge whatever for their services, but we also would be allowed to boycott/avoid buying their services. It should be an all-or-none deal.
I do not like the gov't telling us what to do or what to buy!
Re: Universal health coverage in Massachusetts
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Sure, there are state subsidy programs to provide healthcare for lower income individuals. But what about the people that fall into the loopholes for qualifying for state-paid healthcare? For example, a retail employee who might earn slightly above the cut-off for qualifying for state healthcare, but does not receive insurance from their work. (There are many jobs that do not provide employee healthcare benefits; even grocery store chains such as Super Fresh do not attempt to provide healthcare until you work there for 1.5yrs) That person would be in an income bracket where he/she can just barely take care of him/herself independently(i.e., living paycheck to paycheck). One unexpected expense or devastating event(e.g., a house fire, getting sued by someone, theft or ID theft, or even having an asshole boyfriend/girlfriend screwing them out of money such as what happened to Xiomara, etc) could put them in a situation where they cannot adequately afford to purchase their own, but their taxable income is slightly too high to qualify for state healthcare. I know that these people are more of the exception than the norm, but the point is, these kinds of people exist. Plus, MA already has some of the highest individual insurance costs in the country.
New York already has evolved the answer to this dilemma. If 'poor people's incomes are in danger of exceeding the eligibility threshold for social welfare benefits / medicaid, they simply quit their job or don't show up for work for a few days to eliminate the extra income !
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Plus, there are some uninsured people who will utilize a doctor's services, and then stiff the doctor on the bill. These unpaid bills can result in doctors raising their prices even more to compensate for the unpaid bills, which can result in insurance companies raising their rates to compensate for having to possibly pay the doctors more money for the insured services. But again, those things help out the big businesses more than the little guy! I'm not saying that it is fair for doctors to get stiffed by cash-paying uninsured patients...for example, I hated it enough when a customer stiffed me on a lapdance once before. But I don't think that forcing people to buy health insurance(or else getting a tax penalty) is the answer either.
This is a major component of the governmental push towards mandatory purchase of private health insurance ... to eliminate the govts responsibility to supplement the budgets of hospitals and clinics who are being overrun with non-paying patients that they are forced by law to care for. Of course the major 'culprits' in this regard appear to be illegal aliens ! Thus the Massachusetts proposal is not out of character at all ... 'let's provide more free services to the poor / illegal aliens' at the expense of small business (who will be pressured to provide employee health insurance) and at the expense of middle class / entrepreneurs (who will be leveraged to purchase their own health insurance if not provided by said employer).
Re: Universal health coverage in Massachusetts
actually, it looks like WalMart may have just saved the day for middle class Mass residents ... by accident !!!
(snip)"By a 2-to-1 ruling, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Baltimore found that the Maryland requirement — which affected only Wal-Mart — violated a 32-year-old federal labor law known by its shorthand, Erisa.
The law, known to regulators as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, was intended to allow big companies to set up uniform health benefits across the country, rather than navigate state-by-state requirements.
By forcing Wal-Mart to revamp health care plans in Maryland, the court found, the Maryland law directly violated Erisa.
That decision, upholding a lower court decision in July, threatens to derail health care legislation known as fair share that is under consideration in states across the country.
“State level health care reform is still possible, but it’s not going to be the Maryland model,” said Naomi Walker, the director of state legislative programs at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which lobbied for the Maryland law. “We have to go back to the drawing board.”
Unlike Erisa, the Maryland health care bill was never about making life easier for big companies like Wal-Mart. Rather, it was about shifting the burden for insuring the working poor from state Medicaid plans, with the clear implication that Wal-Mart had shirked its obligations."(snip) from
In a nutshell, WalMart's appeal has resulted in a court decision that the federal ERISA law supersedes state laws on matters of employee benefits i.e. health insurance - in the sense that state laws requiring that nationwide employers must provide health insurance coverage in one state that they do not provide to analogous employees in other states violates ERISA. The Mass approach is a bit different, but this court decision certainly provides grounds for a constitutional appeal of the Mass law.
Re: Universal health coverage in Massachusetts
They're trying to pass something similar in Texas for all employers, even small business owners. Ugh, its something I'm completely torn about.
Re: Universal health coverage in Massachusetts
again I don't want to get overly political in Dollar Den, but the bottom line appears to be that all of these states must operate under a federal mandate to provide health care to the 'poor'. So far the cost of providing that health care has fallen directly on state / local treasuries, paid for by state and local taxes. The state govt's are now trying to shift part of that cost directly to small businesses and individuals via mandatory health insurance premiums - which by a clever scheme of medicaid price fixing results in part of the actual cost of providing health care to the 'poor' being recouped by overcharging those who have private health insurance for the same health services.
Unfortunately, the insurance premiums will probably go up much more than state / local taxes go down !!
Re: Universal health coverage in Massachusetts
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Originally Posted by Melonie
New York already has evolved the answer to this dilemma. If 'poor people's incomes are in danger of exceeding the eligibility
threshold for social welfare benefits / medicaid, they simply quit their job or don't show up for work for a few days to
eliminate the extra income !
Yeah, but what about people who believe in honesty and morals? Or people who are too proud to turn to social programs for help? For example, when I was poor, I never once turned to welfare or medicaid(although I did try applying for unemployment ONCE after a stupid job fired me for a bullshit reason...but got turned down because they screwed up my reported income on my app!). I probably coulda gotten more money through welfare than the bullshit jobs I was working in, but I didn't think it was right for me to hog welfare when I was healthy, educated, no kids, no disabilities, no handicaps. I felt that there were a lot of people who had a "real" need for it. Perhaps I am in the slim minority, but sometimes moral people can exist! The gov't obviously doesn't care about those who are moral?
So basically, this is going to penalize people who are honest! Or convince more people to STOP being honest/moral, i.e. stop working so they can collect gov't benefits!(or in the case of strippers, perhaps convince them to stop honestly reporting their income so they can qualify for free Medicaid) Oh great! Discouragement of motivation, yeah that's what this country needs!(likewise, communism also discourages motivation) Helping the big healthcare companies to make more profit, oh yeah that's what we really need too!
Re: Universal health coverage in Massachusetts
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Yeah, but what about people who believe in honesty and morals? Or people who are too proud to turn to social programs for help?
In New York ? Fugeddaboudit ! Mississippi maybe.
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So basically, this is going to penalize people who are honest! Or convince more people to STOP being honest/moral, i.e. stop working so they can collect gov't benefits!(or in the case of strippers, perhaps convince them to stop honestly reporting their income so they can qualify for free Medicaid) Oh great! Discouragement of motivation, yeah that's what this country needs!(likewise, communism also discourages motivation)
Again we're dancing on the outer edges of politics vs finances ... but arguably those elements of gov't that advocate such policies don't want people who are honest, moral and hardworking. They want people who are 'street smart', dependent on gov't benefit checks in order to survive, and willing to express their 'gratitute' for those gov't benefit checks at the polls when the next election rolls around.
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Helping the big healthcare companies to make more profit, oh yeah that's what we really need too!
Well, certain elements of the gov't have an answer ready for that too - which was partially implemented (remember the flu vaccine shortage ?). Their de-facto proposal is to cap prices on prescription drugs sold in the USA to a level that allows very little profit over actual production costs. This allows for savings to purchasers of those drugs i.e. private health insurance companies and the gov't for the most part. But it also provides little in the way of residual drug company profits. It also tends to result in shortages when drug companies cannot turn a consistent profit on a particular drug (i.e. the vaccine) that exceeds the potential legal liability from negative patient reactions to that drug thus the drug companies simply choose to stop making that drug in order to stop losing money when court settlement payouts exceed profits.
Lack of sufficient drug company profits to both satisfy stockholders and fund research and testing of new drugs, however, results in less research and testing of new drugs. Because infectious agents build up immunity to drugs over a period of time, less research and testing of new drugs involves a real risk that after 10-15 years of prescribing the best drugs that are presently available, those drugs will lose their effectiveness. If a 'new' drug has not been researched and is therefore not available 10-15 years from now, there is a very real risk of resistant strains of infectious agents running out of control.
Now the gov't cannot let this happen due to both the voices of serious and conscientious people at the CDC and the political / media backlash that could result 10-15 years from now if people start dying on a grand scale due to infections that cannot be stopped / controlled. Research into new drugs must continue. Those same certain elements of gov't of course have an answer for this as well. Perform that research at gov't funded facilities instead of within private drug companies, and put those doctors and researchers involved on the gov't payroll instead of a private drug company payroll ! This of course transfers the true cost of drug research out of retail prescription drug prices which must be paid by rich, middle class and poor alike, and onto federal / state treasuries which is then only get paid for by higher earning taxpayers (which thanks to income tax rates vs cap gains / tax favored investments usually means middle class taxpayers pay the highest taxes on a percentage basis !). Financially speaking, this achieves the same sort of result re cost shifting as well as making more people dependent on gov't paychecks.
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Re: Universal health coverage in Massachusetts
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Originally Posted by
Melonie
actually, it looks like WalMart may have just saved the day for middle class Mass residents ... by accident !!!...
...In a nutshell, WalMart's appeal has resulted in a court decision that the federal ERISA law supersedes state laws on matters of employee benefits i.e. health insurance - in the sense that state laws requiring that nationwide employers must provide health insurance coverage in one state that they do not provide to analogous employees in other states violates ERISA. The Mass approach is a bit different, but this court decision certainly provides grounds for a constitutional appeal of the Mass law.
I've heard this will create some problems for the proposed universal health coverage in California as well. And just as an aside, the last I heard, the funds to be collected for this will not be referred to as "taxes," but as "loans" instead. Orwell was prescient!
Re: Universal health coverage in Massachusetts
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And just as an aside, the last I heard, the funds to be collected for this will not be referred to as "taxes," but as "loans" instead. Orwell was prescient!
same old story i.e. there is no 'free lunch' nor 'free health care'. If the poor don't / can't pay for their health care, somebody else has to - it's that simple ! From there the question then becomes which particular method gov't will employ to extract more money from taxpayers and/or businesses in order to pay for that health care. Introducing the gov't mandated purchase of private insurance merely provides two extra layers of obscurity in terms of gov't vs private accounting and direct gov't expenditures vs gov't mandated private expenditures. It actually does nothing to decrease total costs, and arguably increases them via allowing private insurers of newly written gov't mandated private health insurance policies to tack on a profit margin.