A Massachusetts reader offers this:
What are you guys smoking over there? Here I am in Massachusetts, without health insurance, and with a family of four, and all that has happened is on top of having to pay full freight for my family's doctor bills, I get fined $1000.00 for the privelege.
I don't want your stinking welfare greenstamp department of motor vehicle government cheese copay paperwork foodstamp prepaid doctor tax charity ward let a millionflowers bloom supervision of my family's medical situation, thank you very much.
Catastrophic medical insurance is currently illegal in Massachusetts. All they had to do is allow me to purchase what I could get if I lived 50 miles west, which is REAL LIVE INSURANCE, that is, they would pay if something unexpected, substantial, and expensive happened. And it would cost me a couple hundred bucks a month. But no, I have to pay full freight for every lamebrain thing that every knucklehead who has a job with benefits wants tax free, like gym memberships and aromatherapy and acupuncture and reiki massage and "mental health," ie, I'm a miserable failure as a human being and I want to talk to another miserable failure that went to community college for psychology about it, at great expense. Oh, yes, let's not forget all middle age men that need free blue pills because what a mean spirited thing it would be middle age men didn't wander the earth with extra free hardons.
And so "insurance" becomes paying in advance for others to get what they don't need or deserve, to the point where "Insurance" costs 1200 a month and if something catastrophic did happen, would bankrupt me anyway, because instead of paying $50 for an office visit for an imaginary ailment, but having a real catastrophe paid for, the powers that be would prefer paying $5 dollars copay for an office visit to their yogurt enema wellness healer, but have to chip in 20% for cancer therapy, which would bankrupt anybody that has to worry about the cost of health insurance in the first place.
I am totally sympathetic to what you are saying. I wrongly assumed it was catastrophic health insurance, which used to be called "Major Medical", which is the only kind of medical insurance that makes sense to me. Perhaps we are too gentle with the People's Commonwealth. I am not in favor of insurance for yogurt enemas or yoghurt massages either. What are we smoking? Upmann Magnums. (We call it mid-day "relaxation-inhalation" therapy, paid for by our insurance, of course.)
