Buy Me Some Health Insurance and Cracker Jacks …

In a recent blog post CBS’s Wyatt Andrews gushes about Massachusetts new health care plan that requires people to purchase health care. Can’t afford it? Well naturally the state will pick up the tab.

Andrews begins by discussing his trip to FenwayPark, home of the Boston Red Sox, and how “sitting directly behind one of the dozens of beer stands” was a kiosk promoting the new plan. Andrews explains it like this:

…the state people know what they are doing. They know who they are missing in the program. They are missing young men, perhaps up to 130 thousand of them--most of whom are Red Sox fans.

Imagine that, young men not needing health insurance. What Andrews and most other liberals miss is that some people don’t want health insurance, especially young people. They feel they’re in the peak of life and would rather spend the money on other things for now.

Why should anyone be forced by the government to buy something? Oh wait, we already have auto insurance … but seriously, as the Business & Media Institute has found, the number of uninsured Americans is a heavily inflated statistic used by the media:

There are 8.3 million uninsured people who make between $50,000 and $74,999 per year and 8.74 million who make more than $75,000 a year. That’s roughly 17 million people who ought to be able to ‘afford’ health insurance because they make substantially more than the median household income of $46,326.

Add to that the fact that 45 percent of those who are uninsured at any given time are going to get insurance within four months, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s right; almost half are in that short of a transition phase.

See this BMI article for more.

- Stuart James is a Research Analyst for the Business and Media Institute