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Some talking points that demonstrate Chapter 58 health insurance flaws |
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1. Chapter 58 was crafted as passed with no opportunity for the voters to ratify or reject the legislation and scant opportunity to comment on its provisions. 2. The law represents an unacceptable collusion between government and private industry that favors the rights of companies above those of citizens. 3. Chapter 58 effectively criminalizes the inability to afford or purchase specific health insurance products. The law is unnecessarily punitive and provides no grounds for appeal. Furthermore, individuals are required to provide testimony against themselves via the Health Insurance Responsibility Disclosure forms and on their state taxes returns in apparent violation of our Fifth Amendment Right against self incrimination. 4. The law violates long held principles of personal privacy by coercing the disclosure of personal, financial and medical information to a non-elected and unaccountable quasi-public authority, the Massachusetts Health Insurance Connector. This would seem to constitute an egregious breach of citizens’ rights to privacy under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. 5. The Individual Mandate to purchase proscribed health insurance products or pay fines constitutes an inequitable and regressive tax on citizens in specific socioeconomic and demographic groups. Furthermore, since the penalties vary according to venue of domicile and citizen age, they violate the principle of equality under the law. 6. Chapter 58 contains no proscribed cost controls or limits on insurance companies’ administrative fees and is, therefore, likely to be unsustainable in consideration of spiraling health care costs. 7. The law falls far short of providing true universal access to health care and officials who now back pedal by saying things like, "I meant nearly universal", or "The law wasn't supposed to cover everyone" or "The Massachusetts experiment is a noble laboratory for federal policies" are not admitting the at this law harms all citizens by its costs and its false promises. 8. Chapter 58 will exacerbate the problem of “brain drain” as young, educated and talented individuals will have little incentive to settle in the Commonwealth. 9. The law will further depress the housing and retail sectors as the cost of mandated medical insurance consumes a disproportionate share of citizens’ discretionary income. It will cause unnecessary pain for many working families and make home ownership or a college education unaffordable for thousands. 10. The enforcement of the Individual Mandate will require an unprecedented expansion of government, particularly in the Department of Revenue. 11. Chapter 58 will limit worker productivity, especially among independent contractors and the self employed, who may forgo earnings to obtain subsidized policies or avoid penalties. 12. Whereas the law was never exposed to voter scrutiny, it effectively constitutes taxation without representation, in violation of democratic rules. 13. The law does not take accurate account for the cost of living in Massachusetts nor the cost of rapidly increasing price inflation that citizens endure daily. 14. The law mandates unfunded and unpredictable expenditures that must be paid for by taxpayers at the expense of other services. 15.
The structure of the law causes wasteful spending of many millions of
dollars the should rightfully be used for people's medical care, not to
enrich insurance companies, bureaucrats, advertising companies and layer
upon layer of paper pushers. |
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