Here's how, Wendy.
Posted on 10/09/2009 11:45:33 PM PDT by rabscuttle385
Cape Cod, Mass.
My husband retired from IBM about a decade ago, and as we aren't old enough for Medicare we still buy our health insurance through the company. But IBM, with its typical courtesy, informed us recently that we will be fined by the state.
Why? Because Massachusetts requires every resident to have health insurance, and this year, without informing us directly, the state had changed the rules in a way that made our bare-bones policy no longer acceptable. Unless we ponied up for a pricier policy we neither need nor want—or enrolled in a government-sponsored insurance plan—we would have to pay $1,000 each year to the state.
My husband's response was muted; I was shaking mad. We hadn't imposed our health-care costs on anyone else, yet we were being fined ("taxed" was the word the letter used).
We've spent much of our lives putting away what money we could for retirement. We always intended to be self-sufficient. We've paid off the mortgage on our home, don't carry credit-card debt, and have savings in case of an emergency. We also have a regular monthly income of about $3,000, which includes an IBM pension. My husband, 61, earns a little money on the side, sometimes working as an electronics consultant on renewable energy projects. I'm 58 and make some money writing science books. We are not wealthy, but we aren't a risk of becoming a burden on society either. How did we become outlaws?
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Here's how, Wendy.
Move. Massachusetts does not deserve your money.
The curious thing is that none of these people grasp that moving is an option. If any of them went down to Mississippi...and did a cost analysis...they’d find that daily expenses could be forty percent cheaper. Health care is practical and within reason within most of the southern states. You can find yourself a local clinic and enjoy the same standards that you have in Mass...so why stay?
These are the people who vote for every Rat fraud and now are looking for sympathy. They think that implementing marxist/socialist ideology will bring freedom and prosperity in our life.
Because people like these Massholes fear the red states and the south in particular. They believe all their lefty liberal propaganda about them.
Personally I would have it no other way. We already have too many bleu state leftard jerks moving here. They carry the disease of nanny state liberalism with them which infects and destroys all they touch. See North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada for fine examples of that. No, they need to stay right where they are and clean up the mess they have made.
bump
Ho-hum; daily life in Marxachusetts. Soon coming to a national government near you.
My first thought as well. Retired... why in God's name stay in a place like Massachusetts?
...Unless you're in the vaseline business.
What coverage will you get for 1,000 a year from your state? I mean what would you do if you had a heart attack? Do you have 50,000 dollars to pay out of pocket? If you pay the 1,000 dollars, do you get 100 percent coverage in case of a heart attack? I know some here don’t like this, but I wonder what most would do if they have a hospital bill that they did not plan for and do not have insurance. It just seems so risky to me.
There’s no insurance. It’s just the fine they have to pay to the state because their policy doesn’t meet the minuimum standard. They will continue to pay $3oo per month for the IBM-issued catastrophic policy + $1000.00 fine to the state ( undoubtedly more in future years, if their insurance is even available).
Do not move we don’t want any Mitt country castoffs!
The article contains a clear statement of the problem. It doesn't address the political consequences. I pay 10 times the premium that Wendy was paying (yes mine is a family of four while hers is for two and I am older).
Time after time I have seen people who are uninsured getting hospitalized but not at their expense, but at mine. My premiums are outrageous because I am picking up the burden of others. I really can't feel empathy for Wendy who is paying 1/10th of my premium. The real solution is to deny health care to those who won't pay.
All the pissing an moaning about socialized health-care is meaningless until those who won't contribute are denied benefits. That's the political problem that needs to be faced.
[. . .(Congressman William)Delahunt hated the wind farm. Or, at least, he said he hated it. Delahunt was widely seen as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's man. What Ted Kennedy hated, Bill Delahunt hated. And Ted Kennedy loathed Cape Wind with an unwavering ardor that curiously belied the environmental ideals he so often proclaimed from the floor of the U.S. Senate. Nantucket Sound, Delahunt repeated, is a “precious resource.”]
[Ironically, Delahunt was fighting a proposal that promised to help his own economically stressed hometown. One proposed assembly site for the massive wind turbines, whose parts would arrive from all over the globe, was a closed-down Quincy shipyard. The closing of the yard had devastated the city. Its reopening would give unemployed Quincy workers many highly paid jobs.]
If they move, as some other posters have suggested, they will bring their mindless ideology with them, and poison your state with the same.
So, let them stay right there in Socialist Paradise where they belong. Fools.
Wal-Mart delivers for more people for less money, and pays taxes too.
But then it is a private enterprise competing against other large and small retailers.
Think how the private market has delivered to the poorest of the working poor, color tv’s, cars, air conditioning, heat, running water, shelter, housing clothing.
If only medicine was run like heartless retailers. You would have choice, price, quality, convenience and way way less taxes.
But, no.
Is what I said commons sense, observable to all? Yes. Then why would a Harvard business school graduate not go the deregulation and freedom route? We because he’s a moral and ethical coward who greedily lusts for the Presidency.
Even today, I have read that Germany is bedeviled by those who were ‘formed’ by growing up/through the East German Communist system. Many of whom long for the ‘security’ of ‘socialism’.
Just like many older criminals don’t mind prison, or third generation welfare families never leave public housing.
"Medicare we still buy our health insurance through the company.
Obviously it is a subsidized retirement benefit. Probably at one time it was no cost to the retired, but now IBM requires token payments, higher co-pays and so forth.
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