Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

As the Flagship Sinks in the River

I found out on my weekly trip to Wausau that Warren is closing his hobby shop. It’s another tombstone on these bleak economic times. I really liked my visit on Thursdays and eating at the Olive Garden and visiting Barnes and Noble. Most of my friends do their shopping for RC stuff on line and it’s beginning to look like the sun is setting on many small business as it has with this little corner hobby shop.

I shook my head in dismay one morning last week. Commentators from one of the media outlets went out onto the street and asked people which they liked better, Obama-Care or the Affordable Health Care Act? It was a sad commentary that nobody seemed to know they were the same thing.

Yesterday I learned, while listening to Rush Limbaugh on talk radio, something that I didn’t fully realize. This is that while there’ll be a penalty for not acquiring individual healthcare, the IRS will not be allowed to use the full toolbox they use for delinquent taxpayers. The only tool they’ll have to collect the noncompliance fines will be to take it out of a person’s income tax refund.

Is that a joke or what? Anybody who is semi-intelligent structures their taxes in such a way that they don’t get a refund. The goal of a prudent tax strategy is to pay just enough quarterly and no more. So the young people who are healthy and want no part of the huge premiums they’re going to be required to pay, can avoid the fine by simply making sure they don’t pay into the system any more than qualifies for a token refund.

Right now there is much hoopla about the individual mandate that will require every individual citizen (not businesses) to comply with the law. Since most individual citizens don’t pay taxes they see the law as giving them something for nothing. It’s another government handout that somebody else is going to pay for. What the government eventually wants is a single payer system that cuts the insurance companies out of the loop. Such a system would bankrupt these huge insurance companies and they have quailed before the liberal democrats begging for some sort of intermediate compromise. Well they got it with Obama-Care. Thinking that such a compromise between the status quo and a single payer system would keep them out front, the Insurance companies have enabled the current administration to advance its agenda by supporting the compromise law. Half a bone is better than nothing they must have reasoned. The Tea Party Republicans have been the only force that has stood up to the onslaught of socialist reformers and done the heavy lifting for both the Insurance Companies and working middle class.

The lynchpin to Obama care is the “Individual Mandate’” which is getting younger voters to pay the bill for the extravagance of the new law. Once the working middle class realizes in the next two or three years, how much this is going to cost they are not going to be happy campers. Right now the computer foul up/glitch is making it impossible for those wanting a free ride to sign up. However, it is also making it impossible for young taxpayers to assess the full scope of the tax increases they are about to be served.

Eventually the bugs will be worked out and the machinery will begin to grind forward. However the damage has already been done. The voters realize now that government is totally over its head with the healthcare issue. With the elections coming up there’ll be a growing disenchantment with the whole idea of giving government an ever-expanding role.

It would make political sense to delay implementation until after the elections and that was what the Republicans were calling for. They were assailed with all manner of name calling until the Liberals began to realize how toxic implementation is going to be. Now the Democrats are beginning to agree that this is not such a bad idea. This leaves the President with another delay to launching the flagship accomplishment of his administration. What he fails to realize is that when his “Flagship” comes off the slip it’s going to sink in a cold river of reality. The bill payers don’t want Socialized Medicine in this country. It’s a bitter pill for the Democrats to swallow but the sooner they do the better.

The insurance companies will soon awaken to the fact that their very survival is in jeopardy and get serious about opposing the socialization of the Nation’s healthcare system. If the Affordable Healthcare Act sinks the only alternative for the Democrats will be a single payer system, which is what the hard-core liberals have wanted all along. To sell this emerging new program the Democrats will be blaming the insurance companies, the hospitals, the doctors and pharmaceutical industry. The Irony is that the Republicans, who have been outspoken from the beginning, will also be blamed by an administration that can do nothing but spend recklessly and find reasons to point the finger at others… I know, I know… it’s all George Bush’s fault.