Forced Socialist Insurance: Why Mitt Romney Sucks
Romney was the one that signed the forced socialist health scheme down in Taxachusetts. And now it looks like it is being considered as a “national model” for the rest of the United States.
Key players in the debate over how to provide healthcare coverage for the nation’s 47 million uninsured say they view Massachusetts’ landmark 2006 law as an important model for what Washington could do and how to get it done.
Massachusetts achieved near-universal coverage by investing heavily in patching the holes in the existing system, where most people get coverage through work – something economist Jonathan Gruber of MIT calls “incremental universalism.” This centrist approach rejects both the liberal vision of a Canadian-style Medicare-for-all system and the conservative preference to move to a deregulated market where people buy policies on their own with the help of tax credits.
“The architecture of the Massachusetts plan is very similar to the architecture of what everyone is talking about, which is essentially building on the existing system and not throwing it out,” said Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy group based in Menlo Park, Cal.
With a new administration and Congress gearing up to push a major initiative to expand insurance access for the first time since the Clinton administration’s spectacular failure in 1994, Washington policymakers are eager to avoid making the same political mistakes. Massachusetts leaders made sure that people who liked their coverage could keep it, and they built consensus among a web of healthcare interests to create a new safety net for the uninsured.
Bear in mind that in Massachusetts you MUST have health care insurance or you will be penalized on your taxes. At some point they will probably add jail time for those refuseniks who won’t buy insurance. Imagine that, putting people in jail because they refuse to go along with the socialist health scheme. It’s Massachusetts, it’s the “Spirit of Lenin America” in action.
I hope the Republicans can squish this somehow. But I doubt they will. This is just another step on the road to socialized medicine in America. Mark my words, if this gets through it will grow and mutate into a single payer type canadian nightmare system.
Massachusetts should NEVER be used as a model for anything. Whatever is being done in that state should be used as an example of what NOT to do.
Related posts:
- Massachusetts Begins Rationing Health Care Under Socialist Scheme
- Mitt Romney’s Record on Guns and the 2nd Amendment
- Jane Swift Attacks Mitt Romney
- Why Massachusetts Sucks
- And Here’s Why Massachusetts Sucks So Incredibly Much
I like the Massachusetts plan. Basically, the concept is through a reform of the free market to allow private insurers to bring down the cost of their policies. Then, you take the money that government already spends on free care for the uninsured and you convert it into a subsidy for low-income people who need help buying insurance. Finally, with those changes in place, you come in with an individual mandate, which is basically saying “no more free rides,” that in a reformed marketplace, people have a responsibliity to buy insurance instead of sponging off the taxpayer. I’m not sure how it would work on a national scale, but it works for Massachusetts and it could work for other states.
Um…how about the right of the individual to decide if he or she wants insurance in the first place? Who the hell is the government to mandate forced insurance?
While you are clearly comfortable living with that kind of authoritarian socialism, Kathy, you should not assume that the rest of us are.
The US should avoid doing what Massachusetts is doing at all costs. Massachusetts is a failed and deeply corrupt state. It’s an example of how not to do things.
Jim,
That’s fine if you decide you don’t want to buy insurance. In that case, you should be willing to escrow some money in a health savings account. That way, if you break a bone, or suffer a heart attack, and are taken to the hospital emergency room, I don’t have to pay for your care. What’s conservative about you forcing taxpayers to pay for your health care?
Well that’s the difference between us Kathy. I wouldn’t force anybody to pay for my care.
I’d pay for it myself without the government being involved. And shame on you for assuming otherwise.