Thursday, June 28, 2012

ObamaCare ruling grants unprecedented government intrusion and tax on personal behavior

Those who don't understand what happened today in the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on ObamaCare are celebrating the decision. What they don't know is that the ruling is a monstrous disaster and a huge blow to the constitutional principle of limited government and personal freedom.

Essentially what happened is that the Court ruled that Congress does not have the right to make Americans buy something under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, but that Congress can compel us to buy something under the tax code. What the liberal-acting justices on the Court did today was change the Constitution, allow for the most massive tax hike in history and worse, by doing so, set a catastrophic precedent. Congress now has the unlimited authority to tax you on everything, including - and most alarmingly - your behavior.

According to today's ruling, Americans don't have to purchase health insurance, but if they don't buy it, they will be taxed for their inactivity. With the ruling, the federal government can tell us what it wants us to purchase, and it doesn't have to be relevant to healthcare. It can be an electric car, solar panels, energy efficient refrigerators, anything that would normally be left to our private decisions, in other words, our personal behavior. But if you don't buy items deemed necessary by the government, it now has, courtesy of the Supreme Court ruling, the power to tax you for not doing what it wants you to do. To make sure you pay, ObamaCare has authorized the hiring of at least 16,000 additional IRS agents to enforce the taxes on you.

Despite President Obama's claims that ObamaCare was not going to be a tax increase, it is indeed a massive tax increase, which the Supreme Court confirmed in today's ruling (watch this clip for Obama's flippant, finger-pointing denial that his healthcare plan is a tax increase). ObamaCare is estimated already to cost trillions of dollars to implement, while it is paid for through outrageously higher taxes and cuts to spending on programs, such as those that aid the elderly. With half a trillion dollars cut from Medicare to help fund ObamaCare, senior citizens are already reporting difficulty in getting access to doctor appointments because many doctors have simply stopped taking Medicare patients due to the funding restrictions.

People who think the ruling on ObamaCare ensures that previously uninsured people will now have health insurance are naive. Being forced to purchase insurance doesn't mean everyone can afford to do so. In fact, right now the "tax" for not carrying insurance is far less than the cost of a health policy. Many will simply choose to pay the tax over the insurance premium. Companies especially are very likely to select the tax fine over the costs of offering health benefits to their employees. As employees lose their health plans at work, they'll be forced to go to the state exchange at their local government office to purchase an approved health plan.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated this past March that if ObamaCare were to be upheld by the Supreme Court and not repealed by government, that at least 20 million employees will lose their health benefits through work. Some say this is a very conservative estimate at best.

Additionally, as the fines for not purchasing health insurance rise, as they are set to do incrementally over the years, companies - especially smaller companies - that can no longer afford the fines or the exorbitant health insurance costs will simply close down and many are scared to hire right now because of the vast rules, regulations and costs that come with ObamaCare. This is all part of ObamaCare's design to get people out of private health insurance and into the government-run type of healthcare -- and it also has a lot to do with why the economy continues to suffer.

As for those who cannot afford either the insurance premium or the fine, guess who will be paying for them through skyrocketing health premiums? Those with jobs - in other words - the rich (because by liberal standards, anyone with a job is considered rich). And with insurance companies now forced to absorb an additional 30 million subscribers, many of whom cannot afford it - your premiums will bear the brunt of all that added expense. Also keep in mind that, just because there will be an additional 30 million people entering the health market, it doesn't mean there will suddenly be a related increase in the number of doctors and health facilities available to accommodate all these new patients. Shortage of supply always results in higher costs - and in this case, longer waiting times to see a doctor.

Besides the extreme tax increase handed down by the Supreme Court's ruling today, those with certain moral beliefs have essentially been told to sit down and shut up. What is still intact in ObamaCare is the mandated abortion surcharge of at least $1; taxpayer funding for abortion training; the lack of solid conscience protection clauses for those who don't wish to perform abortions; the oversight committees who decide which health procedures are deemed cost-effective, which is code word for health rationalizing; the undermining of the doctor-patient relationship; and the horrible HHS mandate on contraception and abortifacients. And remember, the president and Congress made themselves exempt from the new healthcare law. If it's such a great thing for Americans, why did they make sure they don't have to follow it themselves?

Anyone thinking that ObamaCare is good for health or the economy need only look at Europe where they have tried similar government-directed healthcare with miserable results. Here, our premiums are expected to rise massively, spending on the program is unsustainable, especially when we are already trillions of dollars in debt, small businesses - the backbone of our economy - are scrambling to find ways to pay for ObamaCare, to the point of letting employees go, fewer people are going into the medical profession because of vast regulations - which will make health access harder to achieve, and the taxes we will all have to pay are stifling. ObamaCare does not improve healthcare or the economy - it threatens both in dire ways and today's ruling made it worse by giving government unheard-of powers to make us act in ways it deems fit.

The ruling is frightening in another way, too. Just this past Monday, President Obama thumbed his nose at the Supreme Court for allowing Arizona to check the immigration status of those suspected to be in this country illegally. To show his anger over that, he childishly told Arizona the federal government will not help them protect their border. Our national security is of little concern to Obama in comparison to his belief that he should get his way in all matters. No doubt he sees today's ruling as permission to do whatever he wants, although he has proven himself untrustworthy with any such power. Imagine how emboldened Obama will now be to push down our throats anything else he chooses.

Today's Court ruling was bad for America in serious ways. It vastly changed the relationship between the federal government and the individual. It expands government power in a jaw-dropping, incomprehensible way and is a huge and heavy blow to our freedom. Our Constitution is hanging on by a thread now that Chief Justice John Roberts bent over backwards to find a way to let the government intrude into our lives in any way it wants (four Justices ruled the entire act was unconstitutional, but Roberts did what he could to find a way around that by fictitiously claiming that behavior is a taxable thing).

This is why it is now up to us citizens to weave the hanging thread of our magnificent Constitution back into the fabric of a strong nation, one that believes in liberty, freedom and justice. We do that by stopping Obama and other liberals in November -- and make no mistake: it is crucial that we do so. We cannot rely on the Court to protect us from unjust laws, and we certainly cannot count on Obama to respect our laws and freedoms, for he prefers tyranny over individual rights - and with a second term to do what he pleases with no fear of having to be re-elected, it's a shuddering thought to consider what he might do. Since his 2008 campaign, Obama has expressed a desire to model America's economy and healthcare system on Europe - a continent all but broke, with middle class families now living as squatters. Only we can keep that from happening.

For the sake of our country's very existence as we know it, President Obama and the liberals in Congress must go. It's up to us to make sure that happens so we can have a hope of repealing ObamaCare and ultimately emerge from the ever-expanding, out-of-control, oppressive government thumb that is currently holding us down.

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3 comments:

  1. John from Rochester HillsJune 28, 2012 at 4:36 PM

    Julie's analysis of the Supreme Court's "decision" today on Obama Care is both accurate and ominous. In a country that was founded on the freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, today's decision severely limits those freedoms going forward. When a government is given carte blanche to tax any and all behaviors that it arbitrarily deems necessary for its citizens to perform, the Constitution, Checks and Balances, and Equality Under the Law no longer have the weight intended by the founding fathers. When the government can place economic pressure on a private citizen to behave in accordance with the whims of the man in charge or the czars that he appoints without recourse by the citizens, the country is on the way to having large posters of our comrade leader proudly displayed in the square as the goose-stepping secret police march by in review. In 1939, the people of Berlin didn’t think it would happen to them, either. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Today’s decision places us well along the path of North Korea, and much further away from the Liberty Bell than most of us realize. July 4th should be a day of serious recollection and motivation. An election is coming up. Please vote for liberty and defeat the growing tyranny that is slowly killing the America we love.

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  2. Actually this is very innacurate. I'd like to see the provision from the ACA that states that the government can raise taxes to pay for this.

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  3. Easy. But before that, remember the SCOTUS just ruled it's okay to impose a tax on anyone for not buying health insurance (or anything the govt wants us to buy!) and here are just a few tid bits from the ACA which you'll see for yourself when you take a week or two to read through the thousands of pages of this disastrous legislation:

    The Tanning Tax imposes a new, 10 percent excise tax on getting a tan at a tanning salon. There is no exemption for tanners making less than $250,000 per year.

    The “Medicine Cabinet Tax.” Under ObamaCAre, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

    The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

    Brand Name Drug Tax. Starting next year, there will be a multi-billion dollar tax imposed on name-brand drug manufacturers.

    Economic Substance Doctrine. Through ObamaCare the IRS is now empowered to disallow perfectly-legal tax deductions and maneuvers if it judges that the deduction or action lacks “economic substance,”.

    The Congressional Budget Office recently increased its original cost estimates of $940 billion to $1.76 trillion over the next 10 years. The CBO also says businesses will see an additional $52 billion in taxes, and drug and medical device companies are being hit with $47 billion in new taxes - costs that will be passed on to consumers or lead to staff reduction. (e.g.,Stryker Corporation already announced it needs to let go of 5,000 employees to offset these new taxes).

    ObamaCare levies a 40 percent excise tax on health insurance plans and an increase in the hospital insurance portion of the payroll tax. ACA lists about 30 other taxes or fees that will one way or another be paid by everyone - including middle- and lower-income people.

    For political reasons, the politicians who crammed this through (by only 3 votes!!!) made sure most of these increases would not go into effect until after the November 2012 election.

    These new taxes will increase rapidly through 2019. The steepest increase occurs in 2013, when total ObamaCare taxes triple from $12 billion to $36 billion because of higher payroll taxes.

    Even the sales of some homes are taxed under ObamaCare.

    Need more information? Read the ACA. It's all in there. And now the Supreme Court gave the federal govt the authority to levy taxes on us at tax time if we don't participate in actions the govt wants us to do. It's disgusting and anyone who is still trying to defend anything about this is mind boggling to me.

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