Romney: "It's Not a Tax!"

[Sandy]

http://blogs.ajc.com/political-insider- ... not-a-tax/

[Dave Roberts]

If Romney wins, he could give us the first Etch-a-Sketch" Presidency--a new interpretation every day of what he meant to say yesterday.

[ET]

Who cares what word is used? In the end it boils down to a expansion of government interference in our lives. Whether it gets called a "tax" or a "penalty" is irrelevant to me outside of the legal word games that get played in legal proceedings. The field of power for Congress is now virtually unlimited. Whatever small scraps of the notion of limited government remained in the Constitution pretty much got thrown out in the trash with this decision. As Jefferson once wrote, "The Constitution... is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please." Such has the "despotic branch" of 5 done with this ruling.

In the real world, it IS a tax. I'm trying desperately to dig up an article I ran across at the end of last week. It was about employees that were now being forced by Obamacare to pay more for their health insurance because Obamacare dictates certain coverages such as no-fee annual physicals. Basically this forces people to spend money for health insurance "benefits" that they may not use and reduces the amount of money they have to spend on other things that they may have purchased in the economy. In effect, Obamacare decreases the ability of everyday folks to engage in economic activity and help the economy recover.

For example, I've only bothered to get one physical in the last 5 years or so just because I haven't made the time for it or bothered to schedule it. It only costs $40 or so, so it's not the money. So now if Obamacare makes my health insurance premium go up to pay for a level of coverage that I don't use or don't need, then of what benefit is that to me? I've now lost more of my income to a "tax" or "penalty" that essentially goes down a black hole or to pay for someone else. I've lost that money that could go to a waitress, restaurant, Home Depot, a hotel room at the beach or any other number of things. For the sake of a relative handful of people, the rest of us get screwed out of some of our money. Does it really matter for those of us who live in the real world whether you call it a "penalty" or a "tax"?

Being this is July 4th, I say let's just call it another "loss of liberty" that is so much a part of the "progressive" tyranny of do-gooders. Their "progress" is bought and paid for in the amount of liberty which they can consume and take away from others.

P.S. And oh, Sandy, you're not telling we conservatives anything that we haven't been saying for the last 6 or 8 months. Romney most certainly isn't the poster child for attacking Obamacare. If he's going to do so, he should do it from a Federalist perspective. Obamacare is an unConstitutional reach of power, but Romneycare is valid because of the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution. If the people of Massachusetts want to play around with more socialized medicine, then have at it. Just don't try to force it on me via Congress mandating such idiocy to the rest of the country.

Now I'm off to watch "Redtails" in honor of the 4th.

[Dave Roberts]

Ed, I need to find your doctor. My last physical with blood work and an EKG was almost $300 before the negotiated price for my particular insurance kicked in. Where do you find $40 physicals?

[Haruo]

[Sandy]

The government has a constitutional responsibility to protect its citizens, not only from military invasion, but from anything which interferes with their life, liberty, or the pursuit of their happiness. The health insurance business is proving itself to be a threat to at least two of those interests in a number of ways. It is rapidly becoming a means of the redistribution of wealth, to the point where it even raised an alarm among some officials in the Bush administration, especially in the fact that premiums people pay to help cover health care costs are going to pay the hundred-million dollar salaries of insurance company executive, and pay for expensive perks. That's going on while they are demanding more money from individuals for patient care and premium costs have soared way past ten times the inflation rate.

It's not a "massive" tax, because Americans who have health insurance won't pay it, and those who obtain health insurance to cover costs they are now fobbing off on to everyone else can avoid it. In that it will provide the minimum level of health coverage, it is, as Romney says, a "fee" because they receive something directly in exchange for it. Why someone would want to pay $200 to the government for what they will get in return when $200 paid to a health insurer will get them twice as much, but that's their choice.

Of course, Romney has to cover his rear because the federal program, declared constitutional by the Supreme Court that has the full constitutional authority to do so, and by a Republican, conservative Justice at that, is modeled off of the program he instituted in Massachusetts, and he doesn't want to look like the flip flopper that he is. But the bottom line is that a majority of Americans see the need for genuine health care reform, and if he makes that an election issue, he'll lose. As many as 15% of those who say in polls that they don't approve of Obamacare are political liberals who don't think this plan goes far enough, and see an Obama victory as a chance to advance to the single payer, government controlled system they wanted in the first place. Do the math. As that translates into votes, it's a loser for Romney. He'd better stick to running on the economy, if his record can support that.

[ET]

[Haruo]

What sort of coverage do the folks who work at your local Wal-Mart have, I wonder? Hereabouts that corporation has a bad habit of underpaying people (and deliberately limiting most employees' hours so they do not qualify as "full-time"), then providing them with information on how to collect food stamps, medical assistance and other social services. Heaven forbid their stockholders should be required to pay any "onerous" taxes or carry decent health insurance themselves... The "evils" of big business (and of big bureaucracies) vary from case to case; my guess is that your coverage has to do with your skill set's rarity more than with the generosity of your employers.

[Dave Roberts]

[ET]

[ET]

[ET]

[Dave Roberts]

Ed, I hear that you are saying that you would rather your company pay twice what it should for insurance than for everyone to get coverage. The way it works now is that when you go to the doctor as a paying patient, your bill is padded so that doctors can cover their unpaid bills and charity care. I guess you prefer that your company get soaked rather than having that responsibility spread to everyone. Is that what I'm reading?

[Dave Roberts]

I guess I've subsidized a lot of care for other people. My last inpatient stay was in 1990, but my premiums are rated by age, not by health.

[ET]

[Dave Roberts]

While your source is a bit questionable in its objectivity, ET, I suspect this differs very little from Bush's expansion of Medicare to create Part D. At first that sounded like it could be free. Guess what?

[ET]

[Sandy]

ET's sources seem to be the same ones that have been exaggerating and misquoting the Congressional budget office figures ever since the Affordable Health Care Act appeared on the scene. It's nothing even close to that, the numbers just don't add up. Why working class Republicans like ET buy into this, I don't understand, but very little that is put out by any source cited by Romney supporters and Republicans is not even close to accurate.

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

[KeithE]

[Sandy]

That bottom chart there on your last post, Keith. Interesting. Out of all of those countries there, the US is the only one that currently has a for-profit health care system with minimum government regulation. So much for the idea that the interference of government in health care increases costs. And I see several countries there, Switzerland, Netherlands, Japan, Norway, Germany, where the quality of the health care, and availability of hospitals and medical professionals exceeds that in the US. Could it be that doing something different would lead to better care at lower cost?

[ET]

[ET]

[KeithE]