Buy Your Own health Insurance Or Else

The concept of requiring all Californians to carry their own health insurance is gaining momentum in the Capitol, as some lawmakers and healthcare advocates see it as a politically viable way to deal with the state’s 5.3 million uninsured.

With the November defeat of Proposition 72 halting efforts to require employers to provide healthcare coverage, the concept looks likely to be part of next year’s legislative debate. But it faces huge hurdles over how to make it financially feasible for the poor and enforce it.

[…]

‘We have too many people that are uninsured in this state,’ Schwarzenegger said in October at the Panetta Institute in Monterey. ‘We have to really address this once and for all, and figure out a way of how we do it, like with car insurance, where we make it law that people carry insurance and that they are really insured, because it’s unfair to so many people when you have people using the hospitals for emergency, and then creating a huge cost.

Hookay. Here in California it is illegal to drive without car insurance. If you are stopped by a cop or get into an accident you can be fined or jailed for failing to have it. You cannot register your car without showing proof that you are insured.

Just how in the hell are they going to enforce a law mandating that every individual buy health insurance? Refuse you medical care? Arrest you? Kill you?

I don’t know how many of you have had to buy individual health insurance policies recently, but it has become absurdly expensive. And the older you get, the more expensive it gets. Here in California between 45 and 65 it is astronomical even for a healthy person. If you’re sick, you’d better be able to afford more than a thousand a month — and that’s if you already have the insurance.

I would dismiss this as an unattainable Republican wet dream, but at this point I take everything they do very seriously. Ahnuld is a cult in this state and it seems he’s actually convinced people that he is doing more than speaking like a cartoon character. This could be an attempt to end medicaid and employer based health insurance all in one fell swoop. The way things are going, they might just succeed.

Welcome to the ownership society. You will now be able to own your own health insurance premium in its entirety! Cool huh?