Way to Go, Mass April 5, 2006 Jill If only it wasn’t so damn cold, and if it wasn’t for their idiotic governor, I’d consider moving there.
It’s snowing right now outside my window in Worcester, Lis. Jill, Romney is a non-issue. His hands are tied by a Democratic legislature that hates him, and even if he were to try to run for re-election, he’s held in so much contempt statewide that he might not even get his party’s support.
I’m keeping a wait and see approach to this. While it’s important to lower the number of uninsured, I get nervous when the government requires me to purchase health insurance through private companies. Are there checks on price gouging by the insurance industry? I think of those most vulnerable – maybe someone working freelance, supporting a couple kids and barely making the high rent and heating bills in the area (hello! snow on Apr 5th??). And now you’re telling them, with no knowledge of their personal finances, that they are required by law to shell out who knows how much money per year they don’t have? I hope it works out, I truly do, but I just hope we haven’t put a new rock out there to squeeze folks already in a hard place. I say this with the caveat that I *don’t* know all the details of the legislation, just what I’ve heard on the news.
I’m in the Boston area and it’s snowing right now (although it seems to be changing into rain). It is rather disturbing…
Snow. Dammit. We in Worcester do not need snow right now. It is spring. Even if we get a foot I am not shovelling the damn stuff. I hope Romney has exactly as much success with his presidential ambitions as the last Massachusetts governor who ran for president.
It’s not sticking, Ledasmom. The roads are down to wet pavement, but it will probably turn to ice tonight. I blame my friends for putting the summer tires back on their cars over the weekend.
It was snowing in Philly earlier today. I think the weather’s just having a laugh at us Northeasterners.
May not be sticking on the pavement (the sidewalks, though, have developed the exact layer of slush necessary for sudden loss of friction when stepped on) but the grass has turned white. Too much snow for sandals; not enough to lose the children in. Sucks.
…I get nervous when the government requires me to purchase health insurance through private companies. Are there checks on price gouging by the insurance industry? I think of those most vulnerable – maybe someone working freelance, supporting a couple kids and barely making the high rent and heating bills in the area (hello! snow on Apr 5th??). And now you’re telling them, with no knowledge of their personal finances, that they are required by law to … RT, Romney has one and only one motive re: the insurance plan and any thing else he focuses his attention on: getting elected POTUS. simple as that. most of his other initiatives have gone down in flames (except of course for cutting social services to the bone, after promising that he would not). he wants the white house – and wants it bad – and he needs a feather in his cap (besides the SLC olympics). the fact that some people in the state will benefit from the plan is completely beside the point. so is the fact that it will burden others. he just doesn’t care. and yes, the cold sucks, but i’d rather be here than in any red state!
Do you actually understand what they’re proposing? They’re proposing to *fine you* if you don’t work for a company that provides insurance and can’t afford to self-insure. They’re going to solve the latter problem by imposing a slap-on-the-wrist fine for companies that don’t provide insurance – nothing that will make it more worth their while to insure workers – that they can use to help subsidize a small increase in Medicaid, and to promote “cheap” insurance programs to self-insure with. How are these insurance policies going to be made affordable? By increasing the deductible. What that means, in English, is that you are going to have to pay out of pocket for “coverage” that won’t start to cover until you’ve already paid a larger chunk out of pocket, or else you’re going to be punished for it. What this will mean, in real life terms, is that fewer people will be able to get medical care when they need it. How do I know? Because when I was paying COBRA, I couldn’t afford to go to the doctor or even more importantly, the dentist, and medical conditions I had went on getting worse and worse until it reached emergency status. God forbid I’d needed a prescription – the copays were more than I could afford. My health plan, even now, consists mainly of don’t get sick/don’t get hurt. I don’t make enough to pay the copays. Moral of the story: never, *ever* trust republicans, *or* wealthy privileged politicians of either stripe, to do the right thing, if you’re a poor working person. Even if they’re from sacred, glorious, wonderful, golden Massachusetts. (It’s not all that perfect, particularly if you’re poor/black/other minority/female.)
-Actually, I’d love to have all the people who think that Massachusetts is some kind of feminist nirvana have to come up here to the Northeast and deal with sexist Massholes for a while. It would be a very good learning experience.
Individuals who can afford private insurance will be penalized on their state income taxes if they do not purchase it. How do they define “can afford?” If someone decides to go without private health insurance in order to put a few hundred a month into savings so their kid can go to college, do they get penalized for “affording it?” What if someone’s spending everything they’ve got, but on a nice car and big apartment and so forth? I’d want to be sure that someone didn’t tell me I had no business not moving to a smaller apartment, or if I ever got a Camaro, that I had no business not selling it and buying a cheaper car in order to afford expensive health insurance that costs more than I’m likely to have to spend and doesn’t cover contraception.
…I had no business not selling it and buying a cheaper car in order to afford expensive health insurance that costs more than I’m likely to have to spend and doesn’t cover contraception. Why would you buy insurance that you don’t want and that doesn’t get you the things you want? If you can afford private insurance, and must therefore buy some according to this new law–it would behove you to buy some that meets your needs.
Hmm, I messed up the “quote” function on my above post. The first paragraph (“…I had no business…”) is quoted from Kyra above. Sorry.
Kristen from MA – I completely agree with you re: Romney. That opportunistic, lying turd can’t wait to go to red state areas and slag off his constituents. The democrats in the house and senate got lucky that he wouldn’t block the bill due to his lofty (and futile) political ambitions. Oh, and I’m with you on the cold. My sister in IN has it way rougher than in MA! Kyra has the point – who or what defines “can afford”? Is it just based on W2 on MA taxes? I don’t know, I need to educate myself on this. Gabriel, my fear is that the cheapest insurance someone might afford to avoid penalties might be, say, a high deductable emergency plan. It does nothing for preventative care and BC, for example, but covers catastrophic events.
I worked outside in the ‘snow’ which was cold and more like rain. We cut off early because we were soaked and shivering and the second floor deck we were laying on was getting slippery. I work get lots of work in mass from people who seem to make an awful lot of money compared to where I grew up and where I live now. Massachusetts is increasingly a very expensive place to live and lower income people are being squeezed tighter there all the time. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t even aware of this law as no one mentioned it and there was no mention of it in the local, nutball conservative rag that my work partner buys everyday. They don’t want the disease of ‘socialized’ medicine to spill over here. It will be interesting to see how it works. Massachusetts can look very inviting from afar, but what I see of Mass, from suburbia to Boston to Springfield is a state very divided along race and class.
They’re going to solve the latter problem by imposing a slap-on-the-wrist fine for companies that don’t provide insurance – nothing that will make it more worth their while to insure workers – that they can use to help subsidize a small increase in Medicaid, and to promote “cheap” insurance programs to self-insure with. There is no way on God’s Green Earth that I could afford to pay health insurance for my one employee. It would put me out of business pronto. Just another reason to avoid employees altogether and hire out every aspect of a job. What that means, in English, is that you are going to have to pay out of pocket for “coverage” that won’t start to cover until you’ve already paid a larger chunk out of pocket, or else you’re going to be punished for it. Aboslutely and this is another fine example of northeastern brand classism. The white upper middle class dominates and controls every aspect of massachusetts politics and policy making, enjoying the limelight of their ‘progressive’ policies which all too often sit squarely on the backs of the lower income service class they consistently ignore. Hell, I can’t even afford health insurance. Frankly, to worry about such is a luxury i can’t even afford the time to consider. But who cares among the power brokers in Mass? Pay up! We can! Why can’t you you plebian white trash? Actually, I’d love to have all the people who think that Massachusetts is some kind of feminist nirvana have to come up here to the Northeast and deal with sexist Massholes for a while. It would be a very good learning experience. I’ll second that! And witness all the lovely social divisions that occur when lack of opportunity due to economic distribution is so out of whack yet so well hidden.
What are people who are already seriously ill, and who get dropped by their insurance because of it, and then can’t get new insurance, supposed to do? Do they get fined, too? This is bullshit. See the difference between health insurance and car insurance is that nobody has to buy a car in the first place. There’s no comparison.
Why would you buy insurance that you don’t want and that doesn’t get you the things you want? If you can afford private insurance, and must therefore buy some according to this new law–it would behove you to buy some that meets your needs. I’m not quite sure what you’re saying here. Of course I wouldn’t want to buy it, I’m trying to clarify whether not buying it in such a situation would get me penalized on the grounds that I “can afford it.” If they’ll pay for health insurance any time you can’t afford it, the obvious temptation is to not buy health insurance, and use the money you would spend to raise your standard of living. Therefore it is logical that the government would try to crack down on such a thing. I’m wondering at what point would they tell a person who spends everything they earn, “cut down on your luxuries and buy health insurance.” Generally, a person can decide that they’d rather spend the money on something other than health insurance. If the price of health insurance got me, say, a 2-bedroom apartment instead of a 1-bedroom apartment (to use the second bedroom as an art studio), I could do that. But under a law that requires me to get health insurance, and penalizes me for not buying private insurance if I can “afford it,” I wonder if I’d still have that option, or if some government agency would tell me I am perfectly capable of affording health insurance since I’m paying for more living space than I need. Obviously, a person who’s barely making rent on a small apartment will not be counted “able to afford.” Equally obviously, a millionaire will be counted “able to afford,” even if he spends every cent he makes on something other than insurance. But what about someone in the middle? If I have no health insurance but live in a spaceous apartment and make payments on a motorcycle in addition to owning a car, and this bill requires me to get health insurance, will they pay it for me based on the fact that I don’t find it worth spending my own money on, or will they insist I buy private insurance that I don’t want, based on the fact that I obviously have plenty of money for luxuries and therefore ought to have to spend it on what they consider a necessity? Basically, what does this law do to people who just don’t value health insurance enough to find it worth paying for? Does it force them to pay for it anyway, or does it simply refuse to pay for them and let them go without, if they’d rather not spend their money on it?
What are people who are already seriously ill, and who get dropped by their insurance because of it, and then can’t get new insurance, supposed to do? Do they get fined, too? Hopefully they would fall into the “cannot afford” category, as they are just as unable to obtain private health insurance as someone who can’t pay the premiums.
I have a good number of freelancing friends here in Mass who are panicking right now. They’ve been on the “don’t get sick” health plan for years, and now any money they’ve socked away to deal with a possible illness is going to get drained by the state in fines for not buying the insurance they couldn’t afford in the first place. This is the real whammy in this plan. I can’t bring myself to feel bad for any business that has 6+ full-time employees that get no health coverage (which are in theory the only businesses that will be fined under the program). What’s even more irritating is that seat-warmer Romney is going to use this for his presidential campaign. After failing at every single thing he’s tried in the state, like reinstating the death penalty, he’s up on CNN right now crowing about how he worked with the liberals to actually accomplish something. Like, what a miracle! You actually got to sign something after 4 years in office perpetually whining and vacationing! Never mind that happened despite your involvement rather than because of it! God, I hate this guy. There’s nothing more Republican than insulting your constituency on a regular basis and considering it a hard day’s work.
Hopefully they would fall into the “cannot afford” category, as they are just as unable to obtain private health insurance as someone who can’t pay the premiums. Except that as I understand it, it’s based purely on how your income compares to the poverty level.