The state's health insurance connector — the highly touted agency that aims to bring cheap medical care to the masses — has turned into a legal pit bull by aggressively going after a growing number of Bay Staters who say they can't afford mandated insurance — or the penalties imposed for not having it. The Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority is cracking down on more than 3,000 residents who are fighting state fines, and has even hired a private law firm to force the health insurance scofflaws to pay penalties of up to $2,000 a year. All told, more than 7,700 people have appealed state fines for not having health insurance, according to connector spokesman Richard Powers. The agency has hired several private attorneys at $50 an hour to hear many of the appeals, and some 3,150 of them have been denied — and the losers told to pay up. The connector has also hired the Hub law firm Bowman & Penski — at $125 an hour — to defend itself against 13 lawsuits filed by fed-up taxpayers who insist they can't afford state required insurance premiums or the escalating fines.. . .
"Every problem that Massachusetts is running into right now, the federal government will confront in 2014," said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the conservative Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. "Just as Massachusetts' residents are having to appeal the extra taxes they are being levied because they can't afford health insurance — and because Massachusetts residents are having to sue the state because it's an unfair and abusive law — citizens from every state in the nation will be doing the same thing in 2014, when Obamacare takes effect," he said.Health panel brings out big guns - BostonHerald.com.
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