You call this REFORM? It's More Like COMMIECARE!

Gary Bauer gives a great analysis of the high negatives Obamacare brings to our society...

Here Comes ObamaCare

"House Democrats returned to Capitol Hill after the Independence Day recess shell shocked from the citizen outrage in response to the “cap and trade” energy tax. Not surprisingly, many politicians began having second thoughts about the next item on the Obama agenda – socialized healthcare. As a result, on Monday our “community organizer in chief” summoned key Democrat lawmakers to a private meeting at the White House, where they were taken to the woodshed for not staying on schedule.

President Obama wants a bill on his desk before Congress leaves town for its August recess. The reason is obvious: The Democrat leadership doesn’t want its members hearing from the public. And the more we learn about the bill, I can see why the Democrats are nervous. Here’s what we know at this point:

• According to the Associated Press, the plan being pushed by House Democrats has a price tag of $1.5 trillion; includes more than $500 billion in tax hikes; and slashes Medicare and Medicaid spending by hundreds of billions of dollars. How is the government going to do all that without cutting services or rationing care? The CBO estimates the plan will increase the deficit by an additional one trillion dollars.
  
  
• The plan calls for a 5.4% “surtax” on incomes over $1 million, “with a gradual tax beginning at $280,000 for individuals.” Keep in mind that Obama and the Democrats have already promised to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire. So when those tax rates go back up to Clinton-era levels, and when this new “healthcare surtax” is imposed, Big Government will be claiming a right to at least 50% of the income of successful families and businesses. And don’t forget state income taxes! At that rate, we are punishing success and it will destroy our economy.
  
  
• If this new tax weren’t bad enough for small businesses, many of which pay their taxes at the individual rates, the plan calls for a fine of 8% of payroll for companies that don’t provide health insurance. There’s an exemption for some small businesses, but what sort of impact do you think this new fine will have on unemployment? Any company that is now struggling and near that cap will simply layoff workers to avoid the fine or it will not hire additional workers to avoid crossing the threshold.
  
  
• Just in case you’re thinking that only the rich and evil “Big Business” are getting soaked by this plan, Big Government is going to mandate that each individual pay for health insurance. And if you don’t pay up, you will be fined. The Associated Press reports, “Individuals who decline [to purchase insurance] would pay 2.5 percent of their incomes as a penalty.”
  
  
• And don’t forget that the plan being pushed in the Senate, as we reported Monday, will also force taxpayers to pay for abortions as a new “healthcare right.”

Higher taxes, individual fines, subsidized abortions and more government debt. No wonder some politicians are nervous about voting for this bill. Just how nervous are they? ABC News reports that the Democrat National Committee is running television ads on healthcare reform targeting, unbelievably, Democrat senators in Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Nebraska and North Dakota. When the DNC has to spend money to target its own senators to support something, you know it’s really bad!"