Republicans are very good at making Americans feel bad.
And the best way to make Americans feel bad is to make them afraid. Very afraid.
The battle over the Affordable Care Act is the best example of Republicans using fear to scare Americans away from the real facts, with breathlessly hyped misinformation, not labeled as such in conservative media. The recent Supreme Court decision to uphold the constitutionality of the individual mandate and the entire "Obamacare" plan should have finally put an end to three years of Republican attempts to defeat the bill. Instead, they are now claiming that the plan increases taxes on the middle class, when in reality, the ACA offers billions of dollars of tax credits for middle-class families and small businesses. And only about 1 percent of Americans will be receiving penalties for not buying health insurance.
Republicans never looked at the debate over the Affordable Care Act as a chance to make Americans feel good. It was solely an unhealthy obsession to defeat President Obama. That is why, to this day, there is no comprehensive Republican healthcare plan, that addresses the 30 million or more Americans without access to affordable health care. Tort reform and buying insurance across state lines are just Republican talking points, not a serious healthcare plan.
Instead of offering solutions, they made stuff up. First, they conjured up the myth of "death panels," and then the notion that Obamacare was socialized medicine. What could be scarier than death and socialism? Except that neither was true. The Affordable Care Act is simply a continuation of our private insurance healthcare system, and expands the already existing Medicaid program. Doctors still work privately, not for the government. But to hear some Republicans tell it, a socialist president threw out our entire current healthcare system in favor of a government-run program. Which to many sounds a lot scarier than the truth, which is how Republicans rally public opinion to their side.
The Republicans' latest scare tactic, attacking the individual mandate, is a bit odd since the individual mandate came out of the conservative Heritage Foundation, and was a key part of the Republican alternative to the Clinton healthcare plan in 1993. And even stranger is that the Republican nominee for president actively supported the mandate in Romneycare, the Massachusetts model for Obamacare, and said so himself as recently as 2009. As Congressional Republicans call it a tax increase, Romney's top advisor says that Romney's individual mandate was a penalty, not a tax, echoing the Obama administration. Expect Romney to come out and flip-flop his way out of this by claiming the individual mandate is a penalty on the state level, and a tax on the federal level.
Of course that doesn't make sense, but neither does anything the Republicans have said about the Affordable Care Act.
The most recent example is Senator Rand Paul's statement that "Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be 'constitutional' does not make it so. The whole thing remains unconstitutional." And when it comes to the Constitution, nobody knows better than eye doctor Rand Paul.
Why do Republicans use scare tactics and misinformation to defeat a healthcare plan that will finally bring near universal coverage to Americans as well as a host of other major improvements?
Because, as John McCain said in a debate four years ago, Republicans don't consider healthcare to be a right, as Democrats do. But Republicans think they have the right to use fear instead of facts to defeat healthcare reform.
And that's not healthy for our country.
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Additionally, I wanted to mention that I feel one the greatest successes of Obamacare will be regulation of insurance companies. Its not enough, but its a start to have insurances do away with lifetime caps, pre-existing exclusions, and dropping coverage. Three big health plans changed courses and agreed to some of the provisions of Obamacare independently in anticipation of the Supreme Court decision. I guess they wanted to send a message that they care about providing quality care when someone puts a gun to their head.
all so over 8000 new IRS Seats will need to be filled .. this is a law that will put America as a Slave Nation to Immigration. America is a Immigration Nation but threw channels and Jobs ! Plus it will kill jobs as well as fraudulent people going to doctors ! We all ready have a health care system just needs reform ! ooo ya one more thing it all so states in file that we would need to change cars and Trucks over too natural Gas !
My question to you is if Obamacare is all the liberals tout it to be, how come the rulers, aka, congress are exempt? Why did Nancy Pelosi overturn the Fairness rule 30 days before Obama was inaugurated? That rule stipulated that any law that Congress passes affecting the public would also apply to members of congress. No cost effective insurance for Nancy and the rest of the ruling elite. You know, Obamacare for thee but not for me.
Wonder why if Obamacare is all it's cracked up to be?
And by the way, this is directly from the text of the ACA Section 1312(d)(3)(D) - (Obamacare to you):
MEMBERS OF CONGRESS IN THE EXCHANGE.—
(i) REQUIREMENT.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, after the effective date of this subtitle, the only health plans that the Federal Government may make available to Members of Congress and congressional staff with respect to their service as a Member of Congress or congressional staff shall be health plans that are—
HR 3590 EAS/PP
(I) created under this Act (or an amendment made by this Act); or
(II) offered through an Exchange established under this Act (or an amendment made by
this Act).
I think Democrats are in for a big war over the next few decades, as I believe Republicans will be forced to either become more and more libertarian, or they will just cease to exist and be replaced by a party much more libertarian. There is a growing base of people that are just sick of government being used to force them to conform to societal norms, and they believe the attack is on their very freedom. People don't just accept something when they believe their very freedom is at stake, and that is why people are increasingly resorting to dirty tricks and fear tactics to fight against this expansion of government.
As for the individual mandate itself, I think people will increasingly realize they can just not pay it. It's probably bad for the stability of our government to start teaching people to just not pay a tax, but the tax cannot even be collected by the IRS if you don't pay and there is no real consequence if you just refuse to pay. So anyone healthy would be stupid to actually maintain health insurance until the second they need it since they can free ride all the way until that point.
And I feel roads and such would be better taken care of by local and state governments. If our federal government didn't provide those things, the tax burden of the federal government would be small enough your state and local governments could increase taxes to easily cover the costs. The biggest benefit to shifting that spending to more local governments would be smaller companies having a better chance at getting the work, which would keep the profits closer to the source of the work. It would also make lobbying for political handouts much harder since you'd have to target 50 different states and thousands of localities instead of just Washington, D.C.
As for tax liens, you need to read PPACA. The IRS specifically cannot place a lien for unpaid individual mandate fines. They also cannot garnish wages. They basically have no means to collect the money other than deducting it from a refund, but anyone interested in not paying the individual mandate can just adjust their contributions to ensure they do not get a refund (you can underpay taxes throughout the year by up to $1000 without getting hit with underpayment fees, and the underpayment fees are a lower percentage than a mortgage anyways).