Yippee oh yay, Massachusetts now has compulsory “universal” health insurance, i.e. socialized medicine. Under the new law hammered out by Democrats and the White House-seeking Republican governor (“See how bipartisan I am?”), everyone in Massachusetts is required to have health insurance ... or else.
Here’s the scheme:
- If you can afford private health insurance, you must buy it or suffer a penalty on your income taxes. (They get to define your ability to “afford”.)
- If you can’t afford it, then your employer must provide it if the company employs more than 10 people. If your employer refuses, he will be penalized up to $295 per employee per year. Let’s see, which is less expensive? $2,950 per year or health insurance for 10 people? Remind me again why the burden of health insurance falls on employers? After all, we don’t expect our employers to pay our auto insurance or home insurance or any other of life’s expenses. But because unions did a good job of tying medical benefits to employment decades ago, it is forever linked to your job.
- The “working poor” (again, defined by the government) will receive government-subsidized health insurance, i.e. taxpayer-funded. To provide this insurance, a new government bureaucracy called the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector has been setup, and we know that government agencies, especially those in Massachusetts, are paragons of efficiency and not just excuses to earmark money for cronies and provide jobs for hacks.
They didn’t attack the real problem
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