And the Baucus Plan doesn't offer a public insurance option.
So you're basically screwed if you have moral objections to being forced by the government to hand over a chunk of your monthly income to the same corporate criminals who heretofore have engaged in practices that can accurately be defined as death panel-ish: canceling the policies as soon as you get sick, denying claims, refusing to pay for life-saving procedures, or, as we read about this week, randomly hiking the premiums for 114,000 Michigan residents by around 30 percent effective immediately. If you happen to object to financing such corporate practices (past or present), there's no public option waiting for you in the Baucus Plan.
Instead, you would have to buy a private insurance policy or be penalized by the federal government like so:
Penalties for failing to get insurance would start at $750 a year for individuals and $1,500 for families. Households making more than three times the federal poverty level -- about $66,000 for a family of four -- would face the maximum fines. For families, it would be $3,800, and for individuals, $950.Let me repeat this another way. Max Baucus wants to force us to hand over billions of dollars in free cash to the private health insurance cartels and if we refuse, we'll be fined thousands of dollars if we object to paying these mafia-style tributes to Baucus' dons.
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I'm glad I am not the only one to notice these significant defects in anything currently being offered, with the notable exception of HR676 (which hasn't any traction at the moment).
I think there are legal challenges waiting to be made on this kind of mandate. It's one thing to trigger having to buy liability insurance by wanting to drive a car; it's quite another to be forced to hand over hard-earned money to a private industry just for being alive and able to pay.
