The American Freedom Network

The Sickness Tax

  The President is open to taxing health benefits, an idea for which he criticized Sen. McCain last fall, when the latter advocated it.  (Sen. McCain at least wanted to mitigate the damage with a tax credit.)  Why do this?  To finance overhauling the health care system.  So, let me see:  President Obama wants to tax my employer-provided health benefits in order to help fix health care.  This sounds like Marx:  “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  (Unlike many parlor Marxists, i’ve actually read “The Communist Manifesto.”)
     Given that health benefits are expensive, their valuation will likely push many into higher tax brackets.  (In spite of the recession, the number of ‘rich’ people, as defined by Obama, appears to be growing; if he’d indeed true to his word about only raising taxes on the ‘rich.’)  The likely result of this is that people will have to opt out of health benefits if they cannot afford a couple thousand at tax time.  They will not have to worry, however, as Obama will have a shiny, new n ational health care system for them to use – just take a number and get in line…
     For the record, I oppose any kind of ‘healthcare system.’  Seeing my physician is not a system, it’s a relationship with someone who treats her profession like a calling.  Ivan Illich was correct when he pegged the institutionalization of medicine as its’ downfall.  People will have to actively manade their health, as the institutions that served to protect them from their lifestyles, or at least mitigated the harm they did to them selves, will be disabled to a significant extent by Obama’s policies.  Henry Ford was right when he said that most people dig their graves with their teeth.  And now that medical Marxism is rising from the grave, a specter is haunting all who live in America – the spectre of healthcare as we’ve known it since World War Two vanishing.  It’s time to quit depending on external sources of healthcare and to become more self-reliant.  (The obvious – watching one’s weight, avoiding the deadly sin of gluttony, et cetera, need not be examined in detail here.)
     Avicenna may become the medical best-seller of the next decade.  Sassafras tea, anyone?