I was born in Boston. I've lived in Massachusetts for the vast majority of my life. I don't want to live here any more.
Mitt Romney has surrendered me to my enemies. It's foolish to blame it on him, perhaps; his successor, Deval Patrick, stays up late every night thinking of things I detest. But Romney's face is on this Massachusetts Universal Medical Insurance Requirement.
I don't have health insurance. I haven't had any health insurance for about four years. I had health insurance for four years prior to that. Before that, I didn't have health insurance for twenty years. I've never had dental insurance.
Health insurance is a misnomer. Insurance is designed to safeguard you from ruination if unexpected things happen. People call that "catastrophic health insurance" nowadays. They call prepaying for all sorts of tangentially medical-related things "health insurance," but it's really more like a retainer or a club.
Massachusetts wouldn't allow me to insure myself or my family. They still don't, really. I should be able to insure my family of four for a few hundred dollars a month against catastrophe, while I pay 100% of everyday doctor bills out of pocket. It's illegal here now, as it was illegal here before.
Very wealthy people use tax-subsidized employee benefit money for all sorts of things that have no business being called "Health," and the legislature mandates that all these sorts of extraneous, frivolous, and even criminal things must be covered by any insurance offered in this state. I tried to get insurance before the state mandated it. It cost over $1100 dollars a month, and it had deductibles that we would never conceivably meet, So we just ended up paying on the nail for everything anyway. I let the insurance lapse, and saved the money to pay my doctor bills.
I've been hospitalized a few times in last decade; my wife, too. My children are well looked after. I don't owe any doctor or hospital any money.
I can't afford "Health" Insurance. Mitt Romney famously announced that he'd wrung the concession from our corrupt and contemptible legislature to allow catastrophic insurance to be offered in the state if he enacted a Universal Healthcare Requirement. He left, because he's a carpetbagger, like pretty much every governor has been here for decades. And two weeks or so later, the legislature reneged. If I wanted insurance, it was right back to over $1000 a month, and it really didn't cover anything sensible fully. But now it's required.
What good is insurance that pays all but ten dollars of an office visit but makes you pay 20% of the cost of a heart transplant if you need one? Somehow you're not supposed to be able to scrape up $150 to have your kid vaccinated for school, but you're expected to have 20% of a six-figure disaster laying around? They're unclear on the concept of insurance. Do they think that if I have a 20% stake in the proceedings, I'm less likely to ask for a heart transplant I don't need?
I'm not poor. I just have no money. I've started a business (Two, really. Well three, kinda.) and it's been difficult. In addition to the State demanding I squander a grand I don't have every month, the US Government demands I get Flood Insurance, even though I don't want it. It's gone from $500 a year to $2600 a year, and it doesn't cover anything, really. I think people enthusiastic about additional government insurance schemes should examine those numbers. My water bill has tripled, though I use less now, and never used very much. My property tax has soared. All told, all the various governments are demanding I spend close to $20,000 just to exist in Massachusetts for a year. And that's not including any income taxes.
I didn't make $20,000 last year.
I could subject myself to an inquisition, and try to be declared poor, and get subsidized insurance, which I imagine is a sort of byzantine Rube Goldberg system with lots of ratios and sliding scales and me pretty much paying for everything like I did before. Then every month I could wonder if I was perpetrating a fraud if I made any money. No one in the government understands or cares about small business. If they do understand it, they hate it and want to kill it.
But I'm being fined $150 a month for not having insurance now. Think of that. Could Marx, or Engels, or Dickens himself come up with a Victorian sweatshop equivalent of being fined because you don't have the money to buy something, but you are required to have it? Do I go to debtor's prison, or the regular kind?
Here's the execrable Boston Globe on the topic:
Beginning with the 2007 state income tax return, those who refuse to enroll in a health insurance plan will lose their personal exemption, worth roughly $200 a year. And beginning on January 1, 2008, uninsured people will be subject to penalties of roughly $150 a month. That's tough, but it's necessary to change the behavior of people who are used to going without insurance, either because they are healthy or are accustomed to relying on the Uncompensated Care Pool to pay for their care.
However, there is a way out of the mandate. The board of the Connector can make exceptions if it finds that an individual's circumstances make coverage unaffordable. And people can appeal to the Connector on their own if they think they can't afford the policies.
That's tough is a marvelous way to phrase that. You could read that two different ways, couldn't you? See, it's
necessary for them to change my behavior. Taking care of yourself and your family is not allowed. I'm spoiling it for everybody else, apparently. Just like catastrophic insurance would ruin everything, which I want and could afford but they won't let me buy, because it doesn't cover acupuncture or penis pills or sex-change operations or a drunken Irish gangster's grandson's all-encompassing-pharmacopeia bills or something.
But never fear.
The Globe says there's a way out. I can go and beg. I can go in front of a government functionary and beg.
As I said, I am entrusted with the care of a wife and two small children. There is a lot to raising two children, things that go well beyond money. I have to teach them things about being industrious, sober, decent human beings, and good citizens.
I'm teaching them something right here, right now. I hope it's the right thing. Here goes.
Hey, government functionary. Hey, Mitt Romney. Pound sand.
