Without commenting re the value of the idea, I believe that this law violates the "takings clause," of the 5th Amendment, because it takes property without due process if a person refuses to spend their assets on themselves for a particular purpose. The law does not tax persons to provide for public services, nor does it order them to pay for insurance to protect others from being injured by their private property while on public roads, such as the mandatory automobile insurance laws. This law will fine a person if he/she refuses to buy something to insure against his/her own possible health problems. In short, it takes money from person A and orders it paid to Insurance Co. B, for a reason not related to compensation for injury caused, breach of contract, unjust enrichment, or for any other legal duty or private obligation. This is a pure private taking, and as such, violates the 5th Amendment. Anyway, that's how I read it.
Why do you think the following statement does not violate the 5th Amendment: it takes money from person A if he owns product C (car) and orders it paid to Insurance Co. B
I think a better plan would be to require any insurance company that wishes to do business in MA, to be willing to take on a proportionate share of the really sick...the so called "uninsurable". This is where our health care system has failed. Right now, the ins co's can cherry pick who they cover leaving the worst of the worst with no health coverage. I don't know why this hasn't happened before. Hell, you can be the worst driver in the world, but they gotta cover you. We need a form "no fault" insurance for health care. And the best thing they could do is NO CHEAP CO-PAY. Make the deductible $500/$1000. Enough of this bs where you go to the doctor and then get to brag about how "it only cost me $20". That's one big reason we have the problem we have now.
Actually, what you are describing would also be a private taking, were it not for the fact that operating a motor vehicle on a public roads is a privilege granted by the government, rather than a right belonging to the People. The auto insurance laws do not require that a person insure their vehicle when operated solely for personal use on private property. But, once the vehicle reaches a public road, then the government can require that the private person pay for the privilege. Suppose that the MA government told you that if you attempt to walk on a public road, that you would have to obtain insurance to mitigate the risk to others that you might injure them. In effect, the government would be charging you for the right to travel, and it would be confining you to the boundaries of your home, unless you could afford the insurance or the penalty fees. This MA health insurance law is effectively instructing persons to insure themselves against injury to protect the public fisc against injury, for no reason other than that a person exists within the physical boundaries of the State of MA. This is ludicrous. Does a resident of NY have to purchase health insurance in order to travel through MA? What if a MA person's physician and hospital is located in CT -- why is the person buying insurance, where the net effect does not implicate anyone in MA? A person does not put others at risk merely due to that person's existence. If this were not the case, then what would stop the state from ordering you to pay your neighbor's house payment, when your neighbor was out of a job, on the theory that but for your having a job, your neighbor might have been able to have that job? If you find that the MA law still seems completely rational, and that my examples are weak, then I suggest that you advocate the repeal of the takings clause from the 5th Amendment. To me, what MA legislators are advocating is suspiciously close to Marx's infamous quote from the "Critique of the Gothe Programme": "In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!"
Thanks a lot for your detailed response. To be quite honest with you I am not competely convinced. I just don't see a major difference between the government requiring a person to pay for the privilege of operating a car on public roads and the government requiring the same private person to pay for the privilege of obtaining employment in the state or simply walking on public roads. I am not commenting on whether this MA law is right or wrong, it just seems to me that both (car and health insurance requirements) are either equally legal or equally illegal. But I am not a lawyer so it's more than likely that I am wrong and you're right.
They'll comply and double their premiums once again. What's the point? The side effect of your huge deductibles idea will be that people will avoid seeing a doctor even when they have to. Forget about preventive care and early diagnostics, no minor medical condition will be treated until it becomes a huge medical problem (worth paying the $500 deductible), every case of every disease will be diagnosed at the latest possible stage, the death rate will skyrocket, the treatement that could cost $100 if diagnosed early will cost $10,000.
Hopefully we won't be saying that it failed because the right did everything they could, and succeeded, in derailing it before it really got its fair test. At any rate, there are working models around to study and customize, no worries. Socialism: It's nothing a little Yankee ingenuity can't make work. (just playin')