“Universal” health care in Massachusetts not working

Passed with much fan fair the health care plan in Massachusetts does not seem to be working out.

With just seven weeks left until 2008, tens of thousands of Massachusetts residents — up to 100,000 or more by some estimates — have yet to sign up for insurance plans created as part of the state’s historic health care reform law.

This has left insurers falling far short of expectations for signing up new customers, as countless people — intentionally or otherwise — come perilously close to risking fines and escalating penalties if they don’t obtain insurance by the end of the year.

As near as I can tell the entire health care “plan” was a law that told people “you will buy insurance” and did not seem to make any provision for making that insurance affordable. 

These plans cost as little as $200 per month in monthly premiums and carry annual deductibles as high as $5,000, depending on age or plan purchase.

$200 per month with a $5000 deductile is not a bargain, in fact sme people might argue that once they passed a law that people had to purchase insurance some, companies may have increased their prices knowing that people had to buy their product.  The penalties are also rather severe for not purchasing health insurance.

Individuals who don’t obtain insurance by the end of the year lose the state’s $219 individual tax exemption. Fines in future years escalate to up to half the cost of an average health plan.

Great, lets take people that are already facing financial hardships and make it even harder for them to comply with the law by fining them. Certain people who read this blog are probably going to point out that government interference is always bad and this is just one more example, and they would have a point. I would counterthat argument with the idea that half-assed government interference is the problem here. The state is going to great lengths to regulate indavidual conduct without regulating corporate conduct. The end result is a very uneven playing field where the insurance companies have a bad product that they know people have to buy.  Sounds like almost any company under a communist dictatership. 

In order to fix this problem all of the indaviduals involved in health care need to act responsibly, that includes the patient, the insurance company and the doctor.  The Massachusetts law trys to make people act responsibly, hopefully now regulators will start looking at the other groups involved.

See the whole article here