what do people in MA think of this? It's another tax.

Gotta Love the Nanny State telling me what to do. Can we force Massachusetts out of the union?

I'm confused. Three times the poverty level would be around 90k, yes?

Does that mean a single person making 90k would be taxed if they didn't have insurance, and so would a couple making only 41k a year?

I think it's a great idea, personally. Heaven forbid people actually make financial decisions for themselves. I mean, if you don't want to pay for auto insurance, don't drive, or (in some states) have a large savings account. If you don't want to pay for homeowner's insurance, don't get a mortgage. If you don't want to pay for health insurance, don't... uh, live in MA?

That's nice. Instead of regulating the ridiculous acts of the health insurance companies, the "lawmakers" decided to force people to sign up for it.
How about people who are rejected because they might have something wrong with them?
Is this the way things are going? The health insurance companies aren't making enough money, so they have their "friends" make a law that forces people to give them more. While still providing barely enough coverage.
Man, I'm glad I'm living in America!

@causticitty:

It's a typo. The $30,636 IS 3x the poverty level. It compares to the $41,076 for a couple.

This sounds awful. Is there a reason besides 'healthcare is good for you' that is allowing this legislation to go through? Otherwise, I can see no other reason than a huge insurance lobby being responsible for this. What programs do the taxes go to? What gets me is that they claim they're pushing for universal healthcare..which usually meant provided by the government, not 'we're forcing you to get healthcare and then calling it universal' healthcare.

@JustAGuy2: Ahh, thanks!

And ouch. If you are self employed and make only 30,636, good luck finding insurance worth buying that you can actually afford!

You'd be paying money for virtually no coverage.

Where do the fines go? Are they being collected and used solely to fund the state-run insurance program? or is it going into some general fund?

I hate govt intervention.

This seems pretty foolish to me. It's taking away the free will of Mass. residents who can afford, but rationally choose not to get, health insurance. This is over-regulation and I'm certainly glad I don't live in Mass.

Health Insurance in the State of Massachusetts is already high due to the requirement that no one can be turned down for health insurance. I can't imagine this is a good thing.

I'm a resident of MA and this is just stupid. If they're already going to force you to pay by adding it to your tax bill then why not apply the charge to GIVING THYE PERSON COVERAGE instead of making it a FINE?? I mean, does fining people make any sense? They're most likely not buying insurance because fo the cost, so the solution is to further financially hobble them, brilliant. If MA really cared about getting people insured they wouldn't be assessing fines, they'd be using the buying power of an entire state to drive down health insurance costs by cutting deals with insurers, jsut like any other corporation does. My company was recently bought out by a huge corporation, and my health coverage went up and costs down because the corp has negotiated much better rates since they have thousands of employees that will be guaranteed customers. Why can't the state do the same?

The flow of "refugees" from the Socialist Republic of Mass will grow even larger.

this is the biggest load of crap i've ever heard. VASTRIGHTWING called it, it's just another way to get money out of people, a highly unethical, criminal sort of way.
it should be your right, in a free country, to choose not to have health insurance. and someone really should tell MA that "universal healthcare" is not a term for a group of people who all happen to have whatever health insurance they can afford, it's a group of people who are all insured by a government program. i also would like to know where this "tax" money goes, since i'm sure it doesn't go to subsidizing healthcare.
not that i ever really considered him before, but i will definitely not be voting for this Mitt Romney douche.

It's actually a very good idea and is working very well, other than delays in paperwork processing.

The insurance companies are offering about 8 different plans, some with prescription, some without. They range from $200/mo on up to over $1k/mo. You can get insurance from a choice of I believe 3 different companies. These are some state run agencies. We are talking BC/BS.

If you don't make a lot of money, you can get insurance for free.

If you make under $41k it is subsidized at a substantial discount.

I makes private insurance available to everyone. No matter if you are self-employed or employed, you can get this insurance.

It gets the state out of the insurance business by moving people from mass health and medecaid to private insurance companies. So now the state doesn't need to have that huge bureaucracy to run.

It is one of the better things to go on in this state in a long while.

What good is it to have health insurance when the insurance companies have doctors working full time to deny you your benefits and lawyers working full time to create arcane rules so they can bill you until you need help then drop you for not reporting a 15 year old yeast infection?

Fuck private health insurance. These asshole corporate bureaucrats have been stealing everyones healthcare money and paying their CEOs hundreds of millions of dollars while little children die because doctors who have never seen them decide their liver operations are unnecessary.

Plans like this are just a way to force people to give their money to the ethically reprehensible asshats who are killing thousands of americans each year with these dirty tricks to get out of paying for insured sick people.

We don't need a healthcare system where the companies providing healthcare are legally required to screw the people to provide better returns for their blue blood old money stockholders. We need to cut these lying thieves and manipulative republicans out of our healthcare and allow competent adults to design a system that places healthcare outcomes ahead of corporate returns.

Fuck Mitt Romney and his dirty games to drive people to hearth insurance companies that will screw them when they most need help. In corporate america having health insurance is no guarantee you will get needed care. We need to get everyone healthcare, but not by giving the healthcare dollars to a bunch of crooks who make the RIAA look like fuckin ghandi, and who are legally obligated to screw their customers to maximize return, and who, because of a corrupt supreme court who thinks the 14th amendment was designed to protect the rights of oppressed corporations, have all the rights of personhood with none of the associated responsibilities or ethical obligations, and who are happy to watch your loved ones die in pain if it means fatter bonus checks.

In other words I'm not to big on this.

@protest:
I doubt that the state imposed these fines with the intention of raising funds. People are too quick to jump into the conspiracy theories. It seems that the Mass. govt. is truly interested in ensuring all their residents have healthcare, and the threats of fines are a way to do it. I don't agree with the law, but I also don't think they are using it as an excuse to extort money from people.

@protest:

You should have the right to choose or not choose healthcare insurance, but the overwhelming majority of people who refuse to get insurance also feel they have a right to free healthcare. So who do you think ends up footing the bill for the non-paying uninsured. The people with insurance, that's who. Medical rates go up to compensate for the delinquent accounts because someone chose not to have insurance. Then insurance premiums go up and those insured have to pay more.

@lesbiansayswhat: I think the purpose, in theory, is that it will drive healthcare costs for everyone down if everyone is insured since there will be fewer uninsured people out there costing the healthcare providers money that they have to make up for by raising prices on everyone else. The main reason that there are so many uninsured people in America is that health insurance is very expensive, because healthcare is very expensive. So the high expense makes it unaffordable for a lot of people, which in turn makes it even more expensive and more unaffordable. You get a vicious cycle, and I think one goal of plans like this one is to break that cycle. Whether mandated coverage is a good way to do that is an entirely different question, and a much more questionable one. Personally I don't think it's going to cut it.

Oy! I can't believe this is turning into a healthcare debate! /sarcasm off :)

If what another poster said it true and this is getting MA out of the business of providing state run insurance, that is good. The govt has no business dictating our healthcare. Just look at the VA and other govt run programs. Thanks but no thanks!

I would much rather see health insurance become competitive and easier to afford privately like car insurance than for the govt to step in. You cannot manage finite resources when the needs are infinite as they are in healthcare.

@DojiStar: Agreed. Where do the previous posters on this thread think the 'magic money' comes from to pay for uninsured people who have to go to the hospital or receive medical care?

This is a reasonable, non-punitive penalty against those who otherwise choose not to have one of the extremely affordable offerings mandated by the state for private companies to provide.

Going without some level of health insurance when you could is effectively riding on the backs of others (and a larger penalty to the taxpayers in the long run) - betting that you're never need medical care. Until you do, it's works fine. The moment you need care, it's broken.

Anytime taxpayers have to pay for someone else's lack of responsibility or unforseen calamity (excepting extreme cases), I'm against it. This solves one of the most egregious examples of government-funded handouts for many in that group of people.

I live in MA and hate this. Minimum coverage through my job comes to about $1300/year. I'm the type who has to be half-dead before I will even set foot in a doctor's office, so for the last five years I haven't opted for the coverage. During that time I had one ER visit to the tune of around $1000 which I paid out-of-pocket, and no other medical expenses. If I had coverage for those five years, it would have cost me $6,500.

I know I'm an odd case, but I can't be the only one who was forced to carry insurance even though I don't need it and likely won't use it. Like previous commenters, when I see that $25 a week coming out of my check, I think of it as just another tax.

You just know that this legislation was originally introduced by some dipsh*t from the Republic of Cambridge. As a native Bostonian who escaped to the fascist state of California (only because of the weather), I find this ridiculous.

I would be appalled that I am required to have insurance. One of the reasons that I do not drive is because the cost of auto insurance is astronomical. I would rather pay for cabs and I still save money. My hate of auto insurance started back in Massachusetts where the cost is so high and we can expect the same thing to happen with health insurance as everyone else pays for the previously uninsurable.

I've lived in Mass. since 1999 and I have to say it's pretty moronic. Being self-employed, I already get taxed to Hell as it is. I appreciate the reasoning for why they government wants us to have insurance - the problem is a lot of insurers have been lessening what they WILL cover but not what they're charging us. So I'm paying more for less.

What's really annoyed me is everyone keeps comparing it to how you have to have insurance to drive here. I can choose not to have a car (I can also choose not to be alive, I guess). My choice is, at the end of my lease, I'll be moving on to more affordable states to live - which has been a common theme. The past few years the state's been reporting increases in the number of people leaving and the main reason is cost of living.

Divorcing myself from my general disdain of a government agency telling me I have to spend money because their lobbyists say so, I really don't believe the state government is serious about this. $76 a month is still cheaper than having health insurance and they know it. If they really wanted every citizen to have the insurance, the fine would be more than the cost of being insured. The state will get the full $76 a month. Even if only 5% of the population pays them that, it's more money in the state's coffers.

Personally, I just think it's hilarious that Mittens is trying to pass himself off as a conservative these days.

Hmmm so apparently everyone is able to afford $200-$700 a month in health insurance on top their other bills and taxes?

People saying this will lower insurance are most likely wrong. Did requiring everyone to wear seatbelts lower your car insurance premiums? Nope. Once everyone is required to have insurance, the companies will be able to do whatever they want with their rates, just like the cable monopolies do.

Why is it that when a few people are getting fucked most people's solution is to try and fuck everyone?

The Libertarian sympathies in me say that this is wrong, as the government is forcing themselves upon me again in another facet. The same libertarian inside understands how money will be funneled into private companies. (Greedy Capitalist pig, I know.) I also believe that health care is very important, and can put a strain on the entire economy if some people don't have it. I am a Massachusetts resident, and feel as though this may be a step I would have liked to seen not taken, but I have never felt so weird about an issue before.

@misstic: The VA has improved a lot and actually gets better healthcare outcomes than many private insurers. You have to understand that a lot of their patients are very complex health cases with a lot of things wrong with them.

Health insurance is never going to be as cheap and competitive as car insurance. It's simply not the same type of market. You can opt out of the need for car insurance by not driving, but you can't opt out of the potential need for healthcare. So what do we do about all the uninsured people? We will end up paying for them one way or another when they eventually need care.

@johnva:

The main reason there are so many uninsured people in America is because latent racism means America doesn't have a welfare state like any other industrialized western nation. Whenever the subject of helping the less fortunate comes up, fat drug addict fucks like Rush Limbaugh and egg loving perverts like Matt Drudge find offensive racist caricatures to force into the dialogue into the gutter, where the idiots in the bible belt, who are too dumb to realize they are in the same boat as the minorities they hate, vote however the clowns (I'm sorry, serious bipartisans) the republicans put on TV tell them, even though it is against their interests.

France pays way less than us per capita, and gets better healthcare outcomes, and covers anyone. In light of this your explanation doesn't hold water. The reason our healthcare is so expansive is we have to pay for healthcare, and a corporate bureaucracy (the insurance companies), and the R&D for Pzeifer to come out with new dick pills, and full price for those pills (instead of buying in bulk). If we cut out the billions of dollars for insurance agencies and their CEOs and stopped spending R&D dollars to find patentable allergy pills that were 2% more effective, we'd have lots of money to bring down healthcare costs.

@SuburbanSocialite: I don't think you're appreciating what health insurance is for. Yes, you don't use as much healthcare if you're young and healthy. But there is still a significant risk that you will incur catastrophic expense. What will happen if you get in an accident (that isn't even your fault)? Or get diagnosed with a serious disease like cancer that you didn't see coming? It can happen, even when you're "healthy". It's not smart to completely go without insurance. At least get some high-deductible insurance and an HSA or something. If you use it for nothing else you will pay much less for the same medical care than if you paid out of pocket.

DOJISTAR: you described a socialist's wet dream, but still forcing people to pay for something they don't want to pay for is a tax. Let's call it what it is. The insurance companies are also wetting their pants over this. You should see the Blue Cross ads that scare you into getting insurance to avoid being a "criminal". This is so NOT about health care.

is it just me or does mitt romney totally seem like the type of guy to lay on a beach in a speedo with white sunblock on his nose giving orders to drop bombs?

I live in MA and I CANNOT afford an additional $200 a month. Between rent, a car payment, food, gas, and a phone bill I can barely make it through the month as it is. This law sucks and I plan on getting the hell out of this state as soon as I'm able to put together a few dollars to cover my moving expenses.

"This seems pretty foolish to me. It's taking away the free will of Mass. residents who can afford, but rationally choose not to get, health insurance. This is over-regulation and I'm certainly glad I don't live in Mass."

I would accept that 'rational choice' of yours, if you agreed to pay all your hospital bills, in full, after receiving life-saving service. Otherwise, you end up like the other uninsured - mooching off the rest of us. Alternatively, we could repeal the law that requires hospitals to take care of everyone, irrespective of his ability to pay. Take your pick.

@johnva: Yes, that worked so well for Car insurance didn't it. Rates went up when you HAD to have insurance. Why bring prices down to what the market will bear if you are forced to buy anyway....

Call me crazy, but it seems cheaper to violate the law ($76/mo) than it does to comply ($200+/mo)... unless they're getting some break that makes those numbers equal.

@TomK: I agree with you (except I don't think it's about racism, primarily). It's about economic class and about greedy people trying to make money off the healthcare system.

I NEVER said I agreed that this is a good healthcare reform plan. I don't think it is. I'm just saying what I think the economic theory behind it is. In reality uninsured "free riders" are only part of the reason why healthcare costs are going up so dramatically. There are many reasons and they all need to be addressed in a comprehensive way.

This is brilliant! this way if you can't afford health insurance you're f*cked not just once but twice!

Dr_Awesome, there are two ways to read your comment. If you really can't afford the insurance the state will subsidize it for you or even pay for it outright. OTOH, if you can actually afford health-care but just don't want to cut back on non-essentials then you are effectively a mooch.

@sonichghog: You SHOULD have to have car insurance to drive a car, for the same reason that it's problematic to have a lot of uninsured people in the healthcare system. Otherwise you get people who are costing everyone else money but not paying for the portion of the risk that they cause. The difference is that no one is forcing you to have car insurance from a private company; you just have to if you want to drive a car. Since there is no way to opt out of this requirement in health insurance, I think a better plan would be some form of socialized healthcare.

@johnva:

Except that most insurers try as hard as possible to deny you coverage when you experience any of those events.

And, typically, succeed. You forgot to cross that T in your signature four years ago on some completely unrelated paperwork! CHEMOTHERAPY DENIED!

@MercuryPDX: First off, health insurance is deductible from Fed income taxes, which is worth $20-40/mo. Second off, if you buy the insurance, you actually have insurance which is now more attractive because the effective cost is reduced. Even better for you, if you actually take advantage of the insurance and go see the doctor every year or two for preventative care you will likely add years to your life (mammograms/colonoscopies are some of the most effective procedures you can get)

@johnva:

It is about class. racism is the tool the upper class uses to drive a wedge between the lower class. If all lower class people are pissed at the rich, the rich lose in a democracy, so they cynically try and turn groups of poor people against each other. Thats where the racism comes in.

@johnva:
What will happen if you get in an accident (that isn't even your fault)?

You sue.

Or get diagnosed with a serious disease like cancer that you didn't see coming?

The company insuring you denies coverage then drops you like a rock and when they dig back in your medical history and find you had an ear infection which obviously contributed to your inoperable brain tumor, and qualifies as a pre-existing condition?

@RvLeshrac: Yes, the insurers are pretty bad and do some pretty unethical things because they have an inherent conflict of interest (profit vs. paying for care). You're still much better off being insured than being completely uninsured. At least if you're insured and they deny your claims persistently you can sue them. Longterm, however, I do think there needs to be some serious government regulation/intervention in healthcare and health insurance. Our for-profit system is basically a failure.

@misstic: "Just look at the VA and other govt run programs. Thanks but no thanks!"

Actually, Medicare is by far the most efficient health-care program in the country.

Everyone agrees our current system is horrible, yet every proposed solution is shot down as being socialist, anti-choice, anti-American, etc. The fact is, we're all paying dearly for those who have no insurance. I for one applaud a state that's willing to try something new. Too bad our national leaders don't have the courage to attack this problem.

I don't think my high premiums should be funding others who have chosen not to be insured.

Unfortunately I have seen very few (no?) examples where private companies have lowered their prices to consumers for ongoing services when the cost of providing those services decreases. Instead, they apply the profits elsewhere -- expansion, reinvestment, payouts to shareholders... I don't expect insurance companies to be any different. Our company's costs in MA for insurance have gone up year after year and I'll probably need hospital care myself from the shock if I'm told in a year or two that we're getting some kind of a price break resulting from this new legislation.

And what *are* those "fines" going toward? I guess I should know this, but I don't.

However, I think it's an interesting experiment as opposed to doing nothing at ALL about the problem. Maybe it will inspire other, better solutions -- someone had to be first.

@MercuryPDX: There isn't always someone to sue in an accident, which is why you may still have to rely on your own insurance. For example, you could be walking down the sidewalk and get hit by a car that runs off the road. If that person then takes off, you might never find them. Or if you do, they might not have nearly enough money to pay for your healthcare. And even if they do a lot of that money will go to your lawyers and not your care, especially in a timely manner. "Sue" is a simplistic solution that doesn't cover many possibilities.

And I agree that the insurers act pretty badly and deny claims for no reason. They have no real incentive to treat patients fairly in the current environment and a lot of incentive not to (profits). That's why I think we need radical reform of the current system. You're still better off having insurance than not, since you can at least sue them, etc if they try to pull something like that.