A Tax By Any Other Name Is Still A Tax

A couple of things have really interested me about the raging health care reform angst. President Obama made the rounds of all the networks except FOX posturing about what the bill would contain. The problem is there is no bill other than the one the house passed out of committee which bears little resemblance to what Obama touting. Having not been voted on, it's currently in limbo.

I'm wondering why, on all those shows, not one anchor asked Obama of which bill he was speaking. The Wyden-Bennet bill, the Dodd-Kennedy bill, the Baucus bill or that House bill?

Beyond that state of confusion is his insistence that the fine to be levied on those not signing up for insurance would not be a tax. Funny, the Baucus bill states it differently:

Excise Tax. The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.

I am also of the opinion that anyone who is required to pay into a government fund that is mandated in order to share the burden across a wide range, is in fact a tax. George Stephanopolis checked with Merriam Webster; I settled for the dictionary on my Mac:

tax |taks|
noun
a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.

Fining or penalizing people for not buying into a government program for which they have no need does not mesh with my idea of reform. Nor the American way of doing things. But then, most of Obama's programs, along with his methods,do not mesh with my way view of the American way of doing things. What he's doing with his heavy handed intrusions is no better than waging a war of choice rather than one of need.

As with the situation in Afghanistan where his hand picked General is at odds with him over man power, he's found himself boxed into a corner and is now going to see if we indeed have the right strategy. He's a day late and a dollar short.

So it is with health care. He's out making promises about a bill that as of yet does not exist. He's making points of things that are in direct contradiction of what's in the bills working their way through committees.

This is why people like me, and there are many, have lost confidence in this man who would reshape the country into one beyond recognition. I worry; not about the people, they're beginning to see what others have for some time. I worry because the hope and change we're seeing is so far from what we visualized. I worry because the opposition party remains weak and rudderless; without leadership. I worry because politics is the reason.

For all the talk about changing the way health care is managed for the good of the people, it reality it's for the good of the special interests both inside and outside the government. It's a wolf in sheep's clothing. And the sheep would be?