Welcome to the Slaughterhouse!: Obamacare!

"If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter." George Washington
Welcome to the Slaughterhouse, America!!

By Nicholas Meyeres 

Thomas Sowell recently said, "It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow now think that we can afford to pay for those same doctors, hospitals, and medication as well as a government bureaucracy to administer it all." Consider that for just one moment if you support federally-enforced government healthcare.

 In fact, once we are finished high fiving each other like we all just won the lottery; we need to deliberate over a few very important points about what Obamacare really means to each and every one of us. Thanks to the Supreme Court of the United States of America the government now has complete authority to tax, not based on income, but on behavior, the entire American people- and not just the top 1%. To put that into a more liberal context: that means that if you are openly pro-abortion because you believe it is your body, therefore your choice, you can’t in good conscience also support a government-mandated healthcare that forces you to give up that same liberty of self-ownership when considering your own private healthcare, right? 

But more than that, it is integral to realize that Obamacare is now considered a tax on every American citizen. We need to fully understand what this means. Simply put, it is now unlawful for you NOT to buy federally-run health insurance, and if you do not the government will use the Internal Revenue Services to forcibly take away your refund, increase your fees, add penalties or even see that you serve jail time.

But that’s okay, at least healthcare is “free” now!

I am frankly beside myself at how some people who claim they can’t pay for insurance today will suddenly have the resources tomorrow after 21 tax increases take place resulting from a health care law costing more than $675 billion over the next 10 years, according to the House Ways and Means Committee. In fact, of those increases, 12 tax hikes would affect families earning less than $250,000 per year. Isn’t this is a clear violation of the president’s own personal pledge to avoid tax hikes on low and middle-income taxpayers? Bottom line: this could well turn out to be the single largest tax in American history.

Are we still high fiving now?

Truth be told, we don’t have to wait to see all of this come to pass. Obamacare has already caused up to 20 million Americans to lose their health-insurance policies today. And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the health-care-reform law will destroy over 800,000 jobs in the future. On top of that, an analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation from November 2009 shows that in 2016, three-quarters of the tax imposed by the individual mandate will fall on those making less than $120,000 of income for a family of four or $59,000 for an individual. Families of four making $72,000 or less and individuals making $35,400 or less will bear nearly half of the mandate tax.

We simply can’t let something this wrong stand. After all, just because a couple of clearly uninformed folks on the Supreme Court declare something to be “constitutional” does not necessarily make it so. It is as Senator Rand Paul said shortly after the ruling, “While the court may have erroneously come to the conclusion that the law is allowable, it certainly does nothing to make this mandate or government takeover of our health care right.”

Lest we forget there’s no doubt this law will also have appalling consequences for younger generations. It will force our youth to purchase health insurance just as they are getting on their feet and begin paying down their college debts, or face major taxation. Truth be told, this is a major win for big, “money-grubbing” insurance companies only, not for the poor and downtrodden. I hope that sits well with supporters of Obamacare.

As a result, I frankly don’t know how a government who forces its people into heavy taxation is truly a compassionate one. I believe that lending a hand to the impoverished is the right thing to do as an individual. However, having our government force us to assist those same people in need is nothing short of “self-righteous bullying” as Penn Jillette put it. To further paraphrase the same quote I posted last time from that great mountain of a man- Sure, people the country over need to be fed, sheltered and even medicated, and if we are decent Americans we will do our humanly best to help everyone we possibly can, but we get no moral credit by forcing others to follow suit, especially at the barrel of a proverbial gun.