Illegal to buy insurance, illegal not to buy insurance

From Sippican Cottage, in Massachusetts, where the health care reforms were a model for the Obamacare proposals. Insurance coverage there dropped among the non-affluent middle class who were supposed to be helped by the "mandatory insurance" reforms.

America still has some pretty independent people in it. Our essayist is one of those "artisans" about whom progressives sometimes get romantic, when envisioning a utopian future less dominated by corporate greed:

It's against the law to have health insurance in Massachusetts, and it's against the law not to have it, too. I'll explain. You better listen, because you might end up like me sooner than you think.

The word "insurance" used to have a definition. It meant you paid a small amount to safeguard against an unlikely but catastrophic event. It's illegal to purchase that in Massachusetts. Has been for a long while, or I'd already have it. . . .

But as I said, I'm like a criminal in Massachusetts. It's mandatory to have "health insurance," and I don't. I just pay my family's doctor bills with my money, like I always have. The state fined me $600+ last year because I couldn't afford the bizarre set of circumstances they call health insurance. Last time I checked, it cost over $1100 a month, and I'd still pay if I went for routine care. And if one of us gets real sick, it would bankrupt us because paying a 20% copay on a six figure bill is science fiction anyway.

, , , The stripmall doctor didn't look at the wrong end of me or anything. I paid seventy bucks, didn't have to wait but ten minutes even though I didn't have an appointment, and got two prescriptions that will cure me. The doctor helpfully told me that if I went to the Stop & Shop, for some reason or other one of the prescriptions would be free. It was. Funny how with all the talk about all the help I'm going to get, I got robbed of $600 on one hand by everyone that's trying to "help" me, and a supermarket gave me something for free. Not funny haha. Funny.

When I was waiting in the lobby for the doctor to see me, the "Town Hall" meeting with President Obama was on the television. It occurred to me that I'd never listened to the guy give a speech, same as his predecessor. It was surreal for my wife and I to sit there and listen to us being discussed like we were a kind of furniture that needed rearranging. It's supposedly a time for questions, but I only have one question, . . Why would you let someone who knows precisely nothing of value about you talk to you like that?