To learn more, to see national critiques on the MA law, and to take action and re-chart the course for health reform, please visit http://www.defendhealth.org

You are absolutely right, that’s why I put the free in quotes. There is considerable collusion among insurers that virtually eliminates any real competition. Now that these lousy products are compulsory, where is any hope to be found that things will get better?
This law is nothing more than corporate welfare that perpetuates and expands a failed system. Simple logic dictates that the best deal to be had in any transaction is gotten by eliminating the number of middlemen in the bargain. Insurers do not provide care, and they have done a dismal job of financing the health delivery system and assuring access. A fragmented conglomeration of private insurance represents the most inefficient means possible of delivering care. Backbreaking health insurance costs are a major reason that jobs are being outsourced, and they account for a high proportion of individuals’ property taxes,as well. This law isn’t good for anyone other than Mr. Roosevelt and his compadres. We can can do better, we just need an informed populace, that demands their elected officials do their jobs, and the political will.
I’ve been sitting on the sidelines in recent days because I felt like I had had my say, but I couldn’t let this self-congratulatory nonsense go unaddressed.

Ron, I wouldn’t exactly call either what we had before or what Chapter 58 does a “free market”.

A free market doesn’t threaten you with punishments and fines if you don’t purchase an inferior product. Might as well have a Yugo law, where everyone is forced to buy a Yugo or else pay a fine that subsidizes Cadillacs for the poor. Or by buying that Yugo, a portion of the sales price subsidizes Cadillacs for the rich. That isn’t a free market. That is being fleeced.

Government has been meddling in so many ways in the last 50 years in effect mandating more and more middlemen get between us and health care.

I am not saying that a free market is the solution to the inequalities of health care, but to blame the free market is to miss all the corruption and distortions in the last 50 years. And free choice of health care providers must be part of the solution at least so we can choose which doctors, nurses and hospitals we go to.

Everyone is on the take, and the more I hear this self congratulatory hold the course rhetoric, the more I know that they are starting to feel the pressure.

The Massachusetts Health Reform Tracking Survey was clear, once exposed to the details of what people are being forced to pay and what they get, 58% thought the premiums were “unreasonable”, 62% thought people would still be “vulnerable” to high medical bills and 62% thought it was “unfair” to require a person to sign up to a plan like the ones offered. These were 1003 Massachusetts residents and not some outsiders.

Go ahead, James Roosevelt, Jr., blame outsiders for the pressure you are feeling. After all you got all the “stakeholders” behind closed doors in secret meetings to work out this law. Blame irresponsible young people. Blame whomever else makes you feel better about what you have done to undermine freedom and democracy in this State in the name of your fear mongering.

Because we blame you.

The fact that you think only “out-of-staters” are critical or expect this law to fail shows that either you have not read the comments on this blog or you are totally delusional! Chapter 58 is a a horror show. It takes food out of my daughter’s mouth to enrich the coffers of health insurers. The no frills (by which I mean “no care” plans) offered via the Connector are useless products that will force people to pay thousands of dollars for fifty bucks worth of care. Since the law contains no cost controls and sets no limits on insurer profits, the whole system will implode within the next few years. The individual mandate is tyrannical and will cause untold pain for hundreds of thousands of Massachusetts families. The “free” market lead us into this morass, and has no potential to get us out of it. Single payer, now!