Actually, I find that relieving. My initial impression, based on how it is being reported, is that the law requires everyone to have health insurance, whether they buy it or have the government buy it for them. That is how it's being reported. But here you have a case in which, according to linked story, "...[O'Brien] is among the approximately 60,000 people who will be excluded from the state requirement to obtain insurance because coverage isn't affordable for them...
she will remain uninsured." So it seems that you aren't really forced to buy insurance.
The reason I'm interested is because when I was a grad student at BU, it was policy, and maybe even state law, that all full-time students, graduate or undergraduate, were required to have insurance. Now, when I was a full-time grad student at UT, the state provided us free insurance. And, as I understand it, it was excellent insurance, equal to the coverage that Governor Ann Richards got is how the described it. Of course, I never used the insurance, and from the get-go I'd rather have had the option to opt out of the plan and be given an extra fifty or whatever in my paycheck. I had no use for the insurance, just like most of my fellow grad students. The only drugs I ever wanted were the ones that the insurance wasn't going to pay for. Backward-ass society we have, sometimes. Anyway, when I found out that the BU policy (and maybe it was a statewide law) was that we had to buy insurance, I was disgusted. So the first year I bit the bullet and used a credit card to pay the 600 dollar-a-year premium. 600 bucks that I'd much rather have kept in my pocket. Admittedly, I did use that insurance once, when I got free anti-protozoan treatment from a clinic for a particularly embarassing condition I acquired from getting too friendly with a female student. But honestly, even if I hadn't had the insurance, the free clinic at MGH would have supplied the antibiotic anyway. And in any case I'd much rather have had that 600 bucks in my pocket than wasting it on health insurance. The second year I wised up. I realized that all they needed was a form which I signed which had a policy number and a name and address of an insurance company. So rather than buy their insurance or try to buy insurance on my own, I simply made up a policy number and a name and an address. I said something like policy #89645078 from the ABC insurance company of 123 Maple Avenue Secaucus, NJ. The only thing I made sure of was that the zip code I used was a legit one from Secaucus, New Jersey. Cost me nothing. Satisfied the school's requirement. Problem solved.
I'd do it again. Most folks I knew bitched about it as well. Except for a few weak or sick or hypochondriac grad students I knew, all agreed that they disliked the policy and would rather have had the option not to have insurance. No state should be allowed to force this on anyone, imho, and whether you're taxing me and using the money for socialized medicine, or whether you're requiring me to buy insurance from my employer, it's the same thing. It's an affront to personal liberty. So when I read Romney's plan to "require all Commonwealth residents to have insurance" I was aflame with rage for the audacity of such authoritarian policy. Now that I have read your article, it seems that Bay State residents are allowed to opt not to pay for any insurance and go without insurance. Granted, O'Brien's take is that "not having insurance is a very, very bad problem." While I disagree with that particular statement, I am glad that she has the right to refuse to let Dunkin Donuts take 98 dollars a month out of her check.
Good news, indeed.
I'm still not entirely clear on the whole mess, though. The article which states that Ms. O'Brien will not be insured, by her own choice, also goes on to say, "The state law requiring every adult to have coverage by July 1 is structured to encourage work-based insurance."
So are they forcing folks to have insurance or aren't they?
