Blue Mass Group

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Health Care conferees: Stop digging, please

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WBUR’s Martha Bebinger had another intriguing report about the health care conference committee, which apparently is likely to produce a bill within a couple of weeks.

The word is that DiMasi and Trav have become more personally involved. Trav has admitted the possibility of a personal mandate; and unfortunately, DiMasi seems to be no longer insisting on the non-insuring employers’ assessment.

Worse yet, one of the ways they’re considering to raise money is increasing the surcharge on those who do provide insurance.

Why, oh why, would you want to further punish those who do the right thing, and reward those who do the wrong thing? Does Dunkin’ Donuts deserve even more of our tax money? Wal-Mart? CVS? Is our system not perverse enough as it is?

So, there’s a short window of time to help out our friends in the business community who do insure, and ourselves as taxpayers. If you haven’t called your reps and senators, telling them to lean on the conferees, better do it soon: 617-722-2000.

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Comments

  1. I’d say that was unbelievable, but it really isn’t.  Don’t underestimate the power of the business lobby.

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    But from an individual’s perspective, can someone tell me how forcing someone to buy insurance from a third party provider isn’t unconstitutional as a taking?  That’s how this plan works right?  If your employer is exempt from providing health insurance, and you are otherwise uninsured, by law you’ll have to purchase a plan from someone?

    • EE, we’ve been back and forth on the personal mandate on the blog over the past year; I’m not crazy about it; David really doesn’t like it. The supporters say it’s like requiring car insurance, which for many people is a mandated purchase. (If you live in, say, Greenfield, you can’t really decide to take the train everywhere.)

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      I definitely see your point — to my mind, it would be better for the government to provide everyone with health care. I would trade higher taxes for the stability, lower costs and efficiency (yes, efficiency) of such a system — I think it would be a net gain in terms of health and my wallet. But that’s not on the table right now.

  2. Yeah, I don’t want to re-hash your old debate.  But, it occurred to me that mandatory health insurance might be analogous to car insurance, except that driving is not an individual right, but rather a privilege given and taken away by the state at any time.  So, they can pretty much regulate the bejeezus out of it (see the seat belt law).

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    So, if I don’t want to pay for car insurance, I don’t have to drive.  But, what if I don’t want to pay for individual health care? I can’t choose to not live (which is still illegal too, by the way).

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    And it’s not like a tax which applies evenly to all groups of citizens, and which is given to the government to be redistributed for an economic program of social benefit.  Instead, this is a forced purchase whose major beneficiaries are private companies. 

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    So, whether its a good or noble idea seems, to me anyway, to be beside the point.  I think it will be found unconstitutional.

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    Now, it seems different when we’re talking about mandating health insurance for employees, because, again, Masachusetts can say which businesses can and can’t operate within the state, and it has the right to regulate that the operation of those businesses.

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    But anyway, that seems all totally beside the point.  I’ll contact my rep about the business mandate.

  4. I sent this to my Rep and Senator this morning.  Feel free to plagiarize, if you’d like.

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    As your constituent, I am writing to express my concern over news reports that negotiators on the health care bill are considering (1) dropping the employer “pay or play” provision; (2) increasing the surcharges on the employers who already provide health care; and (3) imposing an individual mandate on all Massachusetts residents.

    As someone who strongly supported the original House bill, this strikes me as very bad news – close to the worst of all possible worlds.  I think an individual mandate is a very bad (and possibly unconstitutional) idea, though I could grudingly accept it as part of a package that included employer “pay or play.”  But I cannot support it on its own, nor can I fathom why we would further penalize employers who are already trying to do the right thing by covering their employees.

    This is starting to look distressingly like “RomneyCare,” which would force individuals to buy health insurance without really helping them do it, and which would continue to let Wal-Mart and others who don’t cover their employees off the hook.  The least desirable outcome would be to make the current situation worse, and then claim victory, making any actual reform of the system next to impossible.

    I urge you in the strongest possible terms to advocate for the original House bill, and to resist efforts by AIM and the Chamber of Commerce (who, as you know, do not speak for all businesses) to foist the entire burden of reforming the health care system onto those who can least afford it.

    Thank you for your consideration.

  5. From what I’ve heard DiMasi is still very much insisting on an assessment on non-insuring employers. 

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