Mandated health insurance is a bad idea

The Commonwealth seems to assume we’re all going have catastrophic events and become financial burdens to the state if we don’t have health insurance. Not true! Many of us have exemplary dietary and lifestyle habits, seek alternative medicine treatments (often not covered by insurance), use little, if any medication and have the means to pay for all of our health needs, even unexpected emergencies.

Mandating health insurance makes us prey to insurers who must be salivating over this easy windfall. There are horror stories galore of their raising rates exponentially and then denying coverage when claims are made. The insurance industry is broken.

The hefty fines the Commonwealth is going to impose on me, a healthy woman who is doing all the right things and who by choice has no insurance, is an outrageous theft of the very money I have earmarked for my health-care costs. It’s totally antithetical to the worthy intent of helping people who really need insurance and very mean-spirited to those of us who do not. Legislators, I call upon you to remove this punitive provision from the law!

Bunny Garnick
Jamaica Plain

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