While the individual mandate is faring poorly in Massachusetts, legislators in Maryland are doing their best to ignore the experience of our fellow liberal state to the north. Instead, legislators are looking at mandating health insurance coverage for individuals making over $50,000 a year or households making over $100,000 a year. 

To illustrate that bad health care ideas know no party boundary, it's a Republican legislator who is pushing this. Del. Donald Elliott says that “There are a significant number of people who can afford insurance and should have it."

A fine of $1000 per individual would be levied for those who fail to obtain such coverage. That money would be put in a fund to be used for employers to purchase coverage for their employees.

The rationale, of course, is that somehow uncompensated care is driving a huge increase in health care costs. That myth has been exposed numerous times on this blog. Apparently Del. Elliott is not a reader.