Get Insurance Or Go To Jail
Sep 26, 2009 Political
During the campaign, then candidate Obama poo-pooed the idea of compulsory insurance. He told Hillary Clinton, who had proposed the idea, that he did not think it was wise and that controlling costs would allow people to get insurance. In my previous post I stated that no one expects a politician to keep a campaign promise but this was not a promise, this was Obama’s position on an aspect of an opponent’s cure for the problems in health care.
Obama said that he did not think it was good to force people to buy insurance.
Now that he has won the election he has more positions than the Karma Sutra and he changes them often. Interestingly, he intends to do to America what the Karma Sutra instructs people to do to each other.
Barack Obama is touting Obamacare as the only way to fix the problem. We have heard from him and his surrogates that there are only two options, his way or what we have. This is blatantly false and misleading and designed to push through an agenda that is about controlling our lives.
Under Obamacare, those who fail to buy health insurance (and subsequently do not pay the imposed tax for failing to do so) may be sent to jail for a year, fined $25,000, or both. Senator John Ensign requested confirmation of this from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold. Ensign received a handwritten note confirming the information.
I previously wrote that the Obamacare plan would impose a tax increase on the middle class and this is nothing more than a tax increase an the penalty for failing to pay that tax increase. If people pay for the insurance they have paid a tax increase, and if they pay the penalty, they have paid a tax increase. The penalties are for failing to pay what the bill clearly states is a tax.
As Lauri Regan of the American Thinker stated:
Last week, Obama provided us with the untruth that the individual mandate penalty of $1900 is not a tax increase. But if it is not a tax increase, how can the IRS enforce it with the threat of jail or fine? In Obama’s world of fun and games, I suppose anything goes, but I for one have no desire to take my “Chance.”
This, of course, is in addition to all the tax increases that will be hidden in various other aspects of the bill so as to deceive people into thinking that Obama did not raise their taxes. Sometime in the future there will be unhidden tax increases as Obama tries to tackle the huge debt he is racking up. That will probably be after the 2012 election, should he win.
This is America. How can they fine or jail people for not buying health insurance? What will they mandate next that forces us to pay more of our money? Will they require that we all buy a gym membership? Will we all be required to buy subscriptions to a local newspaper to help bail them out? Where will it end?
Will it end with the USA being renamed the USSA?
The Democrats are adding to this bill and they are pushing for government run health care so they can control that part of the economy and have nearly complete control over our lives.
The note from Barthold makes it pretty clear they intend to take over our lives with the use of force.
Good. Force gets force in return and though many politicians think the protests and opposition will die down, they will soon find out that they were wrong.
In 2010, we need to add all of them to the rolls of the unemployed.
Others:
Gateway Pundit
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Tags: barthold, ensign, force, jail, lies, Obama, penalties, taxes
DID I SAY THAT?
Sep 10, 2009 Political
The Resident gave a speech to a Joint Session of Congress last night, during which he decided to change his talking points- which may or may not have been what prompted Rep. Joe Wilson R-SC to yell out what he did- an impromptu shout of “You Lie” directed at the Resident- something many of us at the Town Halls just wish we could do. Joe Wilson is a hero- was he rude? Yes, yes he was; did it need to be said? Yes it did, and should have been said more, even as Hussein began moving the “facts” he uses, going from 47 million people to 30 million people- where did 17 million people go, Mr. Resident?
Or was that also a lie?
In his speech tonight, the president introduced a new number in the health care debate. Remember all those statements from Democrats, including Barack Obama himself, that 47 million Americans are without health insurance? That’s no longer the operative number. “There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage,” the president said in tonight’s speech.
But on August 10, at a town hall meeting, Obama referred to the “46, 47 million people without health insurance in our country…” And on July 23, he said, “This is not just about the 47 million Americans who don’t have any health insurance at all…”
What’s the difference? Obama appears to be choosing his words carefully. There is a difference between Americans who “cannot get coverage” and Americans who “don’t have any health insurance at all.” The interesting question is why Obama has chosen to downgrade the number from 47 million to 30 million. Look for Democrats to begin using the new figure in making the case for Obamacare.
washingtonexaminer.com
Yea, it’s getting down to the nitty- gritty now, and Hussein needs to begin using some real facts here if he wants to make the case- he spent a bunch of his speech “de- bunking” the alleged lies spread by opponents of his little government “make-over”, the death panel stuff, and the abortion stuff, and the illegal alien stuff- none of which he was able to debunk successfully.
OBAMA: “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits either now or in the future. Period.”
THE FACTS: Though there’s no final plan yet, the White House and congressional Democrats already have shown they’re ready to skirt the no-new-deficits pledge.
House Democrats offered a bill that the Congressional Budget Officesaid would add $220 billion to the deficit over 10 years. But Democrats and Obama administration officials claimed the bill actually was deficit-neutral. They said they simply didn’t have to count $245 billion of it — the cost of adjusting Medicare reimbursement rates so physicians don’t face big annual pay cuts.
Their reasoning was that they already had decided to exempt this “doc fix” from congressional rules that require new programs to be paid for. In other words, it doesn’t have to be paid for because they decided it doesn’t have to be paid for.
The administration also said that since Obama already had included the doctor payment in his 10-year budget proposal, it didn’t have to be counted again.
That aside, the long-term prognosis for costs of the health care legislation has not been good.
CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf had this to say in July: “We do not see the sort of fundamental changes that would be necessary to reduce the trajectory of federal health spending by a significant amount.
OBAMA: “There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.”
THE FACTS: Obama time and again has referred to the number of uninsured as 46 million, a figure based on year-old Census data. The new number is based on an analysis by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, which concluded that about two-thirds of Americans without insurance are poor or near poor. “These individuals are less likely to be offered employer-sponsored coverage or to be able to afford to purchase their own coverage,” the report said. By using the new figure, Obama avoids criticism that he is including individuals, particularly healthy young people, who choose not to obtain health insurance.
OBAMA: “If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage.”
THE FACTS: It’s not just a matter of being able to get coverage. Most people would have to get coverage under the law, if his plan is adopted.
In his speech, Obama endorsed mandatory coverage for individuals, an approach he did not embrace as a candidate.
He proposed during the campaign — as he does now — that larger businesses be required to offer insurance to workers or else pay into a fund. But he rejected the idea of requiring individuals to obtain insurance. He said people would get insurance without being forced to do so by the law, if coverage were made affordable. And he repeatedly criticized his Democratic primary rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, for proposing to mandate coverage.
“To force people to get health insurance, you’ve got to have a very harsh penalty,” he said in a February 2008debate.
Now, he says, “individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance — just as most states require you to carry auto insurance.”
OBAMA: Requiring insurance companies to cover preventive care like mammograms and colonoscopies “makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.”
THE FACTS: Studies have shown that much preventive care — particularly tests like the ones Obama mentions — actually costs money instead of saving it. That’s because detecting acute diseases like breast cancer in their early stages involves testing many people who would never end up developing the disease. The costs of a large number of tests, even if they’re relatively cheap, will outweigh the costs of caring for the minority of people who would have ended up getting sick without the testing.
The Congressional Budget Office wrote in August: “The evidence suggests that for most preventive services, expanded utilization leads to higher, not lower, medical spending overall.”
news.yahoo.com
Yes, folks, gather around see the Magnificent Prevaricator, the man who can change his speeches to suit his audience, and change his facts to suit himself.
Gee- wonder if that’s why Joe Wilson felt compelled to shout “You Lie!”, as the Resident gave the speech where the facts became “flexible” things, malleable, able to become anything the Won wanted them to be.
You go Joe- I wish it had been me- I wouldn’t have been as polite.
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