A Socialistic Healthcare System?

The big news of the day is Massachusetts and their concept of healthcare coverage for all of their residents. Business would be required to pay an easy $295 per employee if they fail to provide the coverage directly. Workers who can afford healthcare coverage but fail to carry it will pay more in their income taxes. Low income types would have their healthcare insurance subsidized by the state.

Good idea? I think so. It does not turn the healthcare system into a government controlled business and maintains private insurance companies and private medical facilities. Whenever government tries to do what private business do they will always mess things up, run costs up way beyond what the private sector could do, be turned into a massive unionized blob, and the result will be a nightmare - especially for taxpayers.

The Governor of Massachusetts is Republican Mitt Romney. He's had a successful business career as you can see by his Wikipedia entry. State government is very much like a corporation, with the governor as the CEO. If you have someone without a strong business sense and someone without the mindset of protecting your stakeholders (aka, shareholders, aka residents in this case) then you end up with a worthless CEO - just like we have in Oregon with Democrat Governor Ted Kulongoski - a do-nothing politician, whose biggest claim to fame was taking an over-the-counter drug off the counter and forcing people with a simple cold to go to a doctor for a prescription to get what was an over-the-counter drug.

This is a rare example of government forcing people to be responsible for themselves. After the Katrina screw-up (on the New Orleans and state side) I'd like to see this principle applied to home insurance. Think of the billions of dollars of our tax money would have been saved if people were forced to carry property insurance - especially flood insurance.

The concept of the government (our taxes) taking care of lazy people has got to stop. Take property owners in California - earthquake country. More people are now making the choice NOT to pay for earthquake insurance because they feel should the next big one happen, they will be covered by the American taxpayers! So thus current equation - be lazy and cheap and expect big government to solve your problems. The big problem with that equation is I and all of the other taxpayers are paying simply because they chose not to pay.