HEY REINBEAU!! Question??

[FarmerChick]

Question about Mass. health care

I just read up all about Mass health care on the internet.

It sounds like a good deal. It sounds like is should work to be able to provided for your state to have everyone covered?

I know you are not a fan......but can you tell me the down side of this?

I read the part where small biz of 11 or more must provide coverage, if not they are fined $295 per employee. The state figures that is the cost if they used the emergency rooms and didn't pay for their treatment. Kinda like covering the maybe charge someone would not pay back into the pool, because your company did not provide insurance.

But is gives poor 100% coverage of insurance on the povery level slide and then slides up to more lower income allowing coverage cost cuts etc. based on income. Then it still covers children etc.


I obviously don't have this up close and personal in my state so I am wondering how you see this plan in general?


thanks for any input on it for me.

 

[reinbeau]

The down side is the cost. We're drowning. Pure and simple. Plus add the enormous illegal population we support here, our taxes are through the roof and doing nothing but climbing. Add to that the patronage positions that are riddled throughout our state government, and the protectionism towards those jobs and departments, it makes it really difficult economically for the normal Joe to afford to live here. Of course you'll read the the median family income here is higher - that's a Catch 22.

The Boston Globe (hardly a conservative rag) has an article that explains how the plan hasn't fulfilled it's promises. For example, because hubby and I had made $60k the year prior, we were not elligible for the state plan when he got laid off - so since we'd made all that money the year prior, we had to pay COBRA $1,100 a month on unemployment wages to keep our insurance - thank goodness we did, or I would have been in deep sneakers this past summer spending eight days in the hospital. There's no way you can save money in this state making anything less than $100K a year. We're hardly big spenders, and it's a damned good thing we aren't, if we had high debt I'd be in danger of losing my paid for home! There's what they think, there's what they want you to think, and then there's reality.

As for the $295 fine per employee if a company doesn't offer insurance, wow, that's onerous, isn't it? Much cheaper to pay the fine per employee than it is to offer decent insurance, right? That's what they do. Plus, remember, the employee is legally bound, by law, to have insurance, and if he/she doesn't, she gets to pay a fine, too. Where does all that money go? Around here you can be pretty sure it isn't going back into an insurance pool, it's going into the general fund. A big, huge sucking black hole.

A disclaimer - just so you know, I am not in the dark the way some are around here. My father wrote the Harvard model, on which all HMO's are based. He was a risk management specialist in medical malpractice insurance (and face it, medical malpractice claims, suits and awards play a huge role in health care costs). I've lived in the insurance world my whole life, and have heard the ins and outs from the best in the business. Regulation costs money, government is regulation, total government control is total government regulation - how well has that worked out in, oh, let's talk about TARP, or the mortgage fiasco (Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, dear old Barney's mess), the clunker buy-back, etc. How can we expect them to handle a massive tangle like health care any better than they 'handled' these smaller issues?

That's why I'm against these plans. I just can't afford them, and I don't know many who can. Nevermind what it's going to do to the economic future we're handing our great-grandchildren, at this point.

 

[FarmerChick]

thanks for explaining.

I knew that the "under the povery level" people made out of course cause they get into the plan......but the "just over that average" person who the plan does not help---they must have insurance!!!! So they are forced to buy ins. at high cost.

I see exactly what you are saying now.....and then the "fund"--anytime I hear a "fund" I get very weary..LOL---like knowing the money is probably not being used for what it is supposed to...and then "they" come looking for more mone!! Out of our pockets.

very interesting. I will read that article...later...Tony is calling...gotta go and see what he wants.

be back later..LOL