Health Care Slavery...It's For Your Own Good, Massachusetts!

[Updates below.]

The AP via ABCNews: Mass. Lawmakers OK Mandatory Health Bill

Lawmakers have approved a sweeping health care reform package that dramatically expands coverage for the state's uninsured, a bill that backers hope will become a model for the rest of the nation.

Despite everything that's wrong with this "reform package," I wouldn't at all be surprised if other state governments try to force this on us.

The plan would use a combination of financial incentives and penalties to expand access to health care over the next three years and extend coverage to the state's estimated 500,000 uninsured.

This is how the state operates: they offer (stolen) cash to encourage compliance and they threaten the police baton to assail noncompliance.

"It's only fitting that Massachusetts would set forward and produce the most comprehensive, all-encompassing health care reform bill in the country," said House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, a Democrat.

I've never lived in Massachusetts and if this becomes law there is no way I'll move there. I recommend those remaining rational people living there now to leave. Here's why:

If all goes as planned, poor people will be offered free or heavily subsidized coverage; those who can afford insurance but refuse to get it will face increasing tax penalties until they obtain coverage; and those already insured will see a modest drop in their premiums.

Folks, I want you to pause and think very clearly about the above.

If you can afford to buy health insurance, but decide to forgo it, the state will hit you with heavier and heavier fines until you comply. The state is attempting to substitute their minds and their reason for yours and if you demonstrate your independence of thought and action, you will be governed as the law (PDF) demands. There is no room for individual liberty in this scheme. There is no consideration for private property of either your self or your production. House bill number 4850 defines what the minimum amount of health care coverage for you ought to be and if you disagree, tough shit. There is a religious exemption, but if "Any individual who claimed an exemption but received medical health care during the taxable year for which the return is filed shall be liable for providing or arranging for full payment for the medical health care and be subject to the penalties" laid out elsewhere.

How's that for tolerance of diversity? If your religion says health care is wrong, you can be exempt but if you think it's wrong for people to force others to act against their will, ha, well, that's just the price of modern civilized society. Now get the fuck back in line.

On Tuesday, the House approved the bill on a 154-2 vote and the Senate endorsed it 37-0. A final procedural vote is needed in both chambers of the Democratic-controlled legislature before the bill can head to the desk of Gov. Mitt Romney.

Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said the governor, a potential Republican candidate for president in 2008, would sign the bill but would make some changes that wouldn't "affect the main purpose."

According to Wikipedia (since the state's website is fucking useless regarding this), the Massachusetts Senate is composed of 34 Democrats and 6 Republicans. Likewise, the Massachusetts House of Representatives is composed of 139 Democrats and 21 Republicans. Both the Governor and Lieutenant Governor are Republicans.

If being Republican meant anything, anything at all, the roll call vote in the House would be 139-21, the vote in Senate would be 34-6, and Romney would be vowing to veto this fucking atrocity. I had trouble with the state's website trying to get the accounting of who voted for, against, and who abstained...but if there is any remaining integrity in the minds of Republicans living in that "commonwealth," they ought to be profoundly disgusted with this near-total capitulation to the collectivistic demands of the jackals pushing this.

"What Massachusetts is doing, who they are covering, how they're crafting it, especially the individual requirement, that's all unique," said Laura Tobler, a health policy analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Only in the specifics. The general concept is well-worn and has the blood in its sleeves and shoes to prove it.

The measure does not call for new taxes but would require businesses that do not offer insurance to pay a $295 annual fee per employee.

If I had hair to tear out, I'd do it each time someone doesn't call a mandated, required monetary sum demanded by the state a tax. IT IS A TAX, YOU FOOL. And if you think that amount will remain static over time, you are just as much a fool.

The cost was put at $316 million in the first year, and more than a $1 billion by the third year, with much of that money coming from federal reimbursements and existing state spending, officials said.

So the rest of the country gets to foot the bill for the free health care of the poor and the enforcement of penalties against everyone else in Massachusetts. I feel ill.

The bill requires all residents to be insured beginning July 1, 2007, either by purchasing insurance directly or obtaining it through their employer.

If I lived there right now, I'd be getting ready to move before that date. No joke. Some things are just too important to sit back and take.

The plan hinges in part on two key sections: the $295-per-employee business assessment and a so-called "individual mandate," requiring every citizen who can afford it to obtain health insurance or face increasing tax penalties.

This is as clear an example of tyranny "for your own good" as any in the news right now.

Liberals typically support employer mandates, while conservatives generally back individual responsibility.

The latter is total horseshit and twenty volumes of historical voting data and advocacy quotes couldn't contain the examples to back me up.

"The novelty of what's happened in this building is that instead of saying, 'Let's do neither,' leaders are saying, 'Let's do both,'" said John McDonough of Health Care for All. "This will have a ripple effect across the country."

Hey fuckhead, I don't go around threatening you for not engaging in my pet projects. You stay the hell away from me.

The state's poorest single adults making $9,500 or less a year will have access to health coverage with no premiums or deductibles.

Those living at up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $48,000 for a family of three, will be able to get health coverage on a sliding scale, also with no deductibles.

The vast majority of Massachusetts residents who are already insured could see a modest easing of their premiums.

The aggressive redistribution of wealth continues. There is no right to health care and individuals should pay for their own health. Those who assert otherwise are attempting to enslave you to provide or fund the medical services their preferred class wants.

Individuals deemed able but unwilling to purchase health care could face fines of more than $1,000 a year by the state if they don't get insurance.

Romney pushed vigorously for the individual mandate and called the legislation "something historic, truly landmark, a once-in-a-generation opportunity."

What a cocksucker. I lack the capacity right now to describe how much lower than scum Mitt Romney is.

Republicans aren't worth shit these days (see the debate (!!!) on this at National Review) but this fucker pollutes their name for every second he remains in the party.

John McDonough of Health Care for All called the bill "promising."

"If it can be achieved as outlined, it would be an enormous step forward for Massachusetts," he said.

The jackals might be satisfied now, but they'll grow hungrier again. Arm yourself or perish.

One goal of the bill is to protect $385 million pledged by the federal government over each of the next two years if the state can show it is on a path to reducing its number of uninsured.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has threatened to withhold the money if the state does not have a plan up and running by July 1.

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Anyone who bitches that the Bush Administration is a radical, arch-conservative, deregulatory government is fucking delusional.

I hope The People of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts get what they want. I hope they get it long and hard.

Jesus Christ...what a shitty thing to read about in the morning. Totally ruined the hours up to lunch.

UPDATED 3:55pm
I made the mistake of reading the New York Times' story.

"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..."

No, it isn't. Individual responsibility in matters of health care does not involve the state telling you to buy at least an arbitrarily-defined quantity of insurance or face escalating tax seizures (with the attendant and unmentioned threat of police violence if you fail to comply) and it does not involve the state essentially giving a free ride to a whole class of people (with wealth coerced from the rest of the community) because a bureaucrat-derived formula says they lack the means to pay for that arbitrarily-defined quantity of insurance. Individual responsibility in the realm of health care means the individual is responsible for making the independent choices that he or she thinks best suits his or her situation...and those choices ought not to be colored by the blood of aggression or the threat to spill 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.

Yay, corporate welfare in the form of social welfare. I can't wait to hear the problems this will generate a few years from now given the incentives created.

Businesses with more than 10 workers that do not provide insurance will be assessed up to $295 per employee per year.

And speaking of incentives, small businesses will soon have an incentive to employ no more than 10 people.

The Massachusetts bill creates a sliding scale of affordability ranging from people who can afford insurance outright to those who cannot afford it at all.

No government-created sliding scale can match the sliding scales of real-world individuals with changing (or stable) values, needs, and circumstances.

(page 2)

"Whenever you can have the medical community, the business community and the advocates all applauding our efforts, I think that's indicative of a successful exercise," said State Senator Robert E. Travaglini, the majority leader.

My rule of thumb? If you can convince a broad spectrum of entrenched establishment interests consisting of groups normally opposed to each other to agree on a policy, then something's up.

Mr. Romney, who is considering running for president in 2008, said in an interview Tuesday that the bill, passed by a legislature that is 85 percent Democratic, was "95 percent of what I proposed."

He said, "This is really a landmark for our state because this proves at this stage that we can get health insurance for all our citizens without raising taxes and without a government takeover. The old single-payer canard is gone."

My emphasis.

This thing that talks is either clearly misleading or is clearly insane. No, this isn't a case of outright state socialist central planning health care with one entity providing all to all financed through high tax rates. But it is not a difference in kind, it is a difference in degree.

Mr. Romney pushed the idea of the "individual mandate," requiring people who can afford insurance to buy it.

Man, gawddamn that's just scary. In the context of today, just about anything can be justified using that philosophy. Think about it. Using that justification, the state could try to force you to live a healthier life (quit smoking, exercise more, eat better, drive safer and with less-polluting vehicles, etc.) if you can afford the services and products to do so. I mean, think of how much money we could save through prevention! Stop the expensive problems before they arise to save our system the larger cost down the road!! Think of the social costs conserved for other public things!!! Who could possibly be against efficient government???

Eric Fehrnstrom, the governor's communications director, said that for those people with incomes above 300 percent of poverty, "our assumption was that these would be mostly single mothers who just did not have the wherewithal to get insurance. It turned out it was mostly young males. In some cases they are making very attractive salaries. These are people who just don't imagine themselves needing care, but of course when they break a leg when they're out bungee jumping they go to the hospital and we end up paying for their care anyway."

Well holy fucking shit, if the problem is hospitals sending costs to the state...stop accepting the costs and let the hospitals decide whom to accept and whom to treat. This is one of those "individual responsibility" things, you morons. The state created the problem by socializing that end of the market. The solution isn't more socialization; the solution is a freer market.

One element that Mr. Romney and some legislators did not want was the fee for employers who do not provide health insurance.

That's nice: hold out for big businesses, screw the individual.

Bob Baker, president of the Smaller Business Association of New England, said his members seemed to accept the idea of the fee.

"The notion of the level playing field, I think from an element of fairness and equity, people are O.K. with it, unless it impinges on their ability to pay for it," Mr. Baker said. "There hasn't been a hue and cry among our members."

There ought to be and if I were a member of that association I'd probably quit in vocal protest whether I could afford it or not.

James Roosevelt Jr., president and chief executive of Tufts Health Plan, agreed.

"I think that will help both improve the quality of health care and lower the cost," Mr. Roosevelt said, but he added, "We would have liked more flexibility in the design of health plans to permit lower premiums that are affordable for all people."

Whatever. I expect you have no problem at all with the idea of the state forcing people to get insurance plans...that is your industry, is it not? How openly crass.

Joseph Landais, 64, could use insurance for himself, his wife and three children. Mr. Landais, a retired hospital custodian, said his wife, a nurse's aide, makes too much for the family to be eligible for Medicaid but not enough to afford insurance. He had a hernia operation four months ago that he did not have to pay for under the free-care pool, but he had not been able to see a doctor since then, even though he is still not feeling well.

"After years that you've been working that hard," Mr. Landais said, "I think you deserve something back."

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

No, you don't, Sir. Not unless that work was performed under a mutual agreement by your employer to provide that "something" in addition to your wage. It is certainly not the case that strangers owe you anything, let alone "society" in the form of a government.

And by the way, Andrew Sullivan doesn't know a "real market" from a pile of rocks:

The bill mandating universal health insurance in Massachusetts is a fascinating one, and Mitt Romney's support a politically admirable maneuver. There are a few things to say in its favor. First off, it empowers individuals to take control of their own health insurance, rather than putting all the emphasis on employers. One reason we have a healthcare cost crisis is that the genius of American consumers is kept at arm's length in the healthcare universe. If you establish a base minimum of insurance, subsidize individuals who need financial help, and mandate a universal requirement, you then force everyone to pick and choose from a variety of insurance plans in an insurance "exchange". Inevitably, in such an exchange, you're going to have intermediaries trying to sell various policies, market them, and provide clear consumer advice about what's in them. You get a real market, in other words, where consumers can see trade-offs and make sane decisions.

[...]

What's not to like? There are several grand compromises like this one out there on various subjects. This one gives the left universality and the right market mechanisms. Romney deserves praise for pioneering it. And the founders once again deserve our gratitude for constructing a federalist system in which useful experiments like this can occur. And we can learn from them. More, please.

Utterly fucking clueless. And just to point to the final analysis (unintended irony, I'm sure), here is the open paragraph to the Washington Post article to which he points:

The Massachusetts legislature approved a bill Tuesday that would require all residents to purchase health insurance or face legal penalties, which would make this the first state to tackle the problem of incomplete medical coverage by treating patients the same way it does cars.

My emphasis.

Yeah, let's all celebrate how people from Massachusetts are about to be dehumanized another degree, by another decree of the state.

Posted by Drizzten at April 05, 2006 10:33 AM