Universal Health Care - Massachusetts Style

Recently, the Massachusetts legislature approved, and (Republican) Governor Romney supports and thus will sign a bill into law requiring all citizens of the Commonwealth to "buy" health insurance from private companies or face legal penalties. Some, they say, would be required to "buy" a policy with no premiums if they were below the poverty line, while others would be penalized varying amounts of money if they were unable to report having an acceptable policy on their income tax returns. The rationale – "We insist that everybody who drives a car has insurance, and cars are a lot less expensive than people," said Romney.

While this seems like, at least, one solution, closer examination makes us wonder how much it took to put the "fix" in with the entire legislature and the governor in a state the size of Massachusetts. First, let's examine Governor Romney's comparison with automobile insurance. The theory behind requiring automobile insurance is to make sure that if someone injures (whether physically or financially) another person, the victim will not have to be victimized twice – being in an accident and paying for it also. While I still do not agree with this mandate, making the government the pimps and enforcers for auto insurance companies, it at least has some logic behind it.

Mandating health insurance, while sounding like a solution to the millions of uninsured people in this country (for this read, "getting them off the public expense roles") accomplishes neither of its primary goals. In the first place, health insurance is a commodity that almost anyone who can afford, buys. There are even published articles about people who marry or remain married so they can get or keep health insurance. This bill tells people who cannot afford the insurance to buy it anyway (go without something else), or face legal consequences. Moreover, where is the money going to come from to pay for these "free" or inexpensive policies that those near or below the poverty line will be required to buy? Why, it will come from money collected in taxes by the Commonwealth, of course. Now, however, it would have to cover insurance company profits in addition to health care. In other words, pay these insurance companies for a policy, or we'll either make you pay, or take it from you by "force." Hmmm… This is a scenario that Tony Soprano would find familiar. They used to call it "Protection," now it's called government mandated health insurance.

In the second place, people are not cars, and while I can choose not to drive if I cannot afford automobile insurance, my only choice in Massachusetts once this bill is signed is not to live. The insurance industry, despite its probable outcries of being forced to provide low cost insurance to sick people, will "clean up" over-all. They have once again proven their ownership of legislators who, with the desire to have all citizens of the Commonwealth covered under a health insurance plan, could have set up a logical and consistent public system that would mandate coverage for all by a central insurer, while eliminating the profit motive and saving millions of dollars in bureaucratic and "profit" costs. Instead, they chose to fill the coffers of the private insurance companies at the expense of the public.

Well done!