Breath Tax
Massachusetts has just passed a law that requires everyone to buy health insurance. Seriously. Is it me, or does this not even come close to passing constitutional muster? How do people, grown people, come up with these ideas in this country?
Gov. Mitt Romney (R) supports the proposal, which would require all uninsured adults in the state to purchase some kind of insurance policy by July 1, 2007, or face a fine.
This is the kind of thing that depresses me about being a Republican. No, not the Abramoff/DeLay scandal, that one is about as normal to human politics as they come. This is a learning moment that some smart political science teacher could make a long class assignment out of.
"We insist that everybody who drives a car has insurance," Romney said in an interview. "And cars are a lot less expensive than people."
This is third-grade thinking that belittles adults in general. Requiring car owners (that have the potential to do damage to other people and their property) to have insurance is at least a defensible position. Taxing someone simply for being alive is not.
Democrats, or at least left-leaning Democrats are expected to come up with these ideas. Of course ideally the money from the premiums would go directly to the State, which would then disburse it, after taking a cut, to favored, er, government approved providers, at government approved rates. The Massachusetts plan is a forced direct payment to private enterprise, which is fascist in nature.
So let's explore the 'intellectual' thinking that goes on behind this brilliant plan:
The idea was applauded by Uwe E. Reinhardt, a professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University, who said that he has long believed that the American system of allowing uninsured patients to receive care at the government's expense was nothing more than "freedom to mooch."
OK. I'm with you so far. Sort of. (Is 'mooch' a technical term?)
"Massachusetts is the first state in America to reach full adulthood," said Reinhardt, noting that the new measure is a move toward personal responsibility. "The rest of America is still in adolescence."
Throw in a little biology. (ed.-wait, isn't Princeton in New Jersey? �looking for a job at MIT in another department maybe.)
This is how Massachusetts leaders envision the plan would work:Uninsured people earning less than the federal poverty threshold would be able to purchase subsidized policies that have no premiums, and would be responsible for very small co-payment fees for emergency-room visits and other services.
So Ewe Reinhardt, "Professor" of Economics at Brooke Shields' alma mater, thinks that 'purchasing' "policies that have no premiums" is not mooching. I suppose we'll chase the deadbeats down afterwards when they don't fork over the co-pay because: "Enforcement of the requirement will not be done by hospitals, officials said: They will treat uninsured patients as before."
It's bad enough that we have taxes on the staples of life, food and labor, but on life itself? Consider: if you are breathing in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on July first, 2007, you will be liable for a tax for the benefit of doing so.
