Posted on 04/04/2006 8:49:57 PM PDT by conservative in nyc
Massachusetts is poised to become the first state to provide nearly universal health care coverage with a bill passed overwhelmingly by the legislature Tuesday that Gov. Mitt Romney says he will sign.
The bill does what health experts say no other state has been able to do: provide a mechanism for all of its citizens to obtain health insurance. It accomplishes that in a way that experts say combines several methods and proposals from across the political spectrum, apportioning the cost among businesses, individuals and the government.
"This is probably about as close as you can get to universal," said Paul B. Ginsburg, president of the nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change in Washington. "It's definitely going to be inspiring to other states about how there was this compromise. They found a way to get to a major expansion of coverage that people could agree on. For a conservative Republican, this is individual responsibility. For a Democrat, this is government helping those that need help."
The bill, which resulted after months of wrangling between legislators and the governor, requires all Massachusetts residents to obtain health coverage by July 1, 2007.
Individuals who can afford private insurance will be penalized on their state income taxes if they do not purchase it. Government subsidies to private insurance plans will allow more of the working poor to buy insurance and will expand the number of children who are eligible for free coverage. Businesses with more than 10 workers that do not provide insurance will be assessed up to $295 per employee per year.
All told, the plan is projected to cover 515,000 uninsured people within three years, about 95 percent of the state's uninsured population, legislators said, leaving less than one percent of the total population unprotected.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Good point!
I had been driving for almost 3 decades and never had an accident, until last year a teenager ran a redlight (never even slowed down) and hit me in the drivers' side door.
You can control your own driving, but you can't do anything about the other idiots out there.
IF one never gets seriously sick or injured, then paying for it WAS a waste. What would you have done if you had a really bad car accident, head injuries, long term care, etc.?
I'm not in favor of what they are doing in Mass, BTW, but I also am of the opinion that it is irresponsible not to have insurance if one can afford it.
If they hit you it's on their insurance not yours, including medical.
What else must a responsible person have insurance for? Should a married man have divorce insurance? That's far more likely than a debilitating injury and can cost a heck of a lot more, plus it affects a man's own children in profoundly negative ways. Isn't it at least as irresponsible not to insure against that?
Mandatory insurance is simply socialism through the back door. A responsible person is one who accepts responsibility for his own actions, period, insurance not required.
Assuming they have any.....
The hospital bill was somewhere around half a million dollars, and that was then; no telling what it might be today.
In my state, we aren't required to carry nearly that much medical coverage on the car insurance.
As I posted above, the risk of such a thing is remote. It happens in those remote cases, sure, and if it does to me, I'm willing to accept the consequences of my decision. I claim no right to infinite resources dedicated to keeping me alive. I am a child of God and if He chooses to take me that way, I have no argument with it. There are plenty of similarly remote catastrophes that may happen after which no amount of medical intervention would save me.
What consequences? That taxpayers will end up paying for your care because you didn't have insurance?
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
No argument from me--t'mator is the one who needs convincing.
The taxpayers? You mean me, a guy who has been paying these taxes his whole life and not seen any return from it? If so, then consider my account even.
If I lived in MA, I'd challenge this on Constitutional grounds.
That is the point I've been trying to make.
I know someone who had retired and was in the process of getting insurance, but had a window of one or two months without insurance. Would you believe his wife developed a brain tumor during that time? He had to go back to work on his old job to get insurance and the bills they acquired while she was sick are astronomical. I think she is going to be ok, for awhile anyway. True, things like this do not happen to everyone, but it does happen a LOT as I'm sure everyone here at FR knows at least ONE person who has had something awful happen and is financially destitute because of it.
I have another relative who did not have insurance. She ran under a logging truck who was backing across the highway into a driveway at night and had no reflectors on his flatbed. She had severe injuries and spent 2 weeks in ICU. For those here who think a motorists insurance will cover the accident- the truck driver had about $25,000 worth. That barely covered any of her hospital and doctor bills. She is also now disabled.
Indeed. All that needs to be done, really, is to end the scam in which the government steals (whatever the official term for it is) any leftover funds in flexible savings accounts at the end of each year unless they're tied to specific no-stealing plans.
The analogy may or may not be valid, depending on how the balance between encouraging preventive care and paying for problems when they happen works out in each case. In any case, the insurance companies and their customers are better able to figure this out than a gaggle of government bureaucrats.
Hey, we agree on something!
What concerns me more is parents neglecting their children's care in order to save a $100 doctor appointment. Maybe children's health would carry a small deductible.
OTOH, the most neglected children seem to be the ones for whom "free" healthcare is available.
In any case, the insurance companies and their customers are better able to figure this out than a gaggle of government bureaucrats.
That's true. But I'd prefer that the government mandate insurance coverage rather than provide healthcare directly.
Yep, it will be like car insurance. One does have to admit that medical costs are extremly expensive .. perhaps if medical prices could go down and if more competition existed than we wouldn't have to have this push for universal health care. I've known people (albeit I think it is rather stupid) who have gone to Mexico because they'd rather pay a crappy doctor down there than one here in the USA. That enough is an indication that we have a problem here in the USA.
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