Posted by
Dawnsblood on Thursday, January 11, 2007 6:25:11 PM
Dean compares and contrasts the different ways
Cali and Mass have chosen to insure their citizens. I am not particularly happy with either but the Mass plan seems more tolerable.
“Romneycare” is modeled on the premise that the ultimate
responsibility for getting health care should rest with each individual
citizen, just as it does with auto insurance. For those who can’t
afford health insurance, the state will help. (Massachusetts has long
since made it illegal for health insurance companies to not take people
with pre-existing conditions, so that’s one consideration that Romney’s
team didn’t have to deal with.) For those with the means to purchase
health insurance but who decline to do so and thus become free-riders
when a health crisis occurs, the state offers healthy “incentives” to
get themselves into an insurance program. Okay, let’s be honest – if
you’ve got the means to get insured, Romneycare will make it in your
interest to do so.
Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, puts all of the responsibility on the Golden State’s employers. Employers
have to provide health insurance. If they don’t, they get whacked. The
individual citizen is thereby infantilized, treated as if he can’t tend
to his own needs.
But it’s worse than that. The Schwarzenegger plan, by putting the
onus on employers, suggests to the citizenry that there will be a free
ride. “Great,” the plan’s proponents imagine a typical Californian
thinking. “I won’t have to pay for health insurance and I’ll still get
it anyway. Whoopee!”