Could this be you?
Brent Tantillo • October 19, 2009 • Uncategorized
The Wall Street Journal published a piece by Wendy Williams on Oct. 10 discussing what might happen to all of us if we get government-run health insurance:
My husband retired from IBM about a decade ago, and as we aren’t old enough for Medicare we still buy our health insurance through the company. But IBM, with its typical courtesy, informed us recently that we will be fined by the state.
Why? Because Massachusetts requires every resident to have health insurance, and this year, without informing us directly, the state had changed the rules in a way that made our bare-bones policy no longer acceptable. Unless we ponied up for a pricier policy we neither need nor want—or enrolled in a government-sponsored insurance plan—we would have to pay $1,000 each year to the state.
The reason why Williams and her husband must pay the fine is that Massachusetts no longer finds their health plan “acceptable.”
For the first two years of the mandate, our IBM health insurance was seen as acceptable in the eyes of the state. This year the rules changed. The state requires that health plans cap out-of-pocket expenses for individuals (not including monthly premiums) at $2,000 a year. Our plan’s cap is $2,500.
Ten years ago, we had excellent coverage through a more gold-plated plan. But we found that it was no longer worth paying the premiums and scaled back to a more modest policy. Today, we pay about $300 a month for catastrophic care. If we went with the next step up in plans offered to us by IBM, our monthly premium would increase to $800. We simply don’t need to pay that kind of money for the amount of health care we actually consume.
Nonetheless, we now owe the state an extra $1,000. Ironically, that’s about the extra amount we would pay out-of-pocket under our current plan if both of us actually fell ill in the same year.
We could choose a state-sponsored plan. It would mean paying more than what we pay now, but less than what IBM’s next step up would cost. But we don’t want to.
IBM seems like a rock of stability compared to the state of Massachusetts. It’s apparent that state health-care policies can change at the whim of politicians in Boston, and we might not be able to adjust to the new rules. The way we figure it, if we sign up for a state-subsidized plan we will be at the mercy of the state.
Remember when the president said he would be opposed to any plan that fined or penalized Americans during his campaign? He even criticized his now-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Baucus Plan model that mandates that all Americans purchase health insurance through fines and penalties. As Williams stated, she doesn’t find it surprising that these penalties are being considered against the rest of America:
Well, I don’t find it surprising. The mandate in Massachusetts was sold as something that wouldn’t penalize people like my husband and me. But those political promises were only good for as long as it took to get the mandate enacted into law.
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