IRS Will Enforce Health Care Bill

Posted: Mar 19, 2010

CBO estimates IRS will need nearly 17,000 new agents to look for people who don't buy a government-mandated insurance policy. This is basically going to be another reason to audit tax returns, and people who don't comply will essentially be treated like tax evaders with the IRS using its "normal" powers of enforcement by levyings fines, penalties and liens against bank accounts, seizing property, etc. And, assuming that the IRS will fold this into its usual enforcement operations, we can expect there will be "opportunities" for people to turn in their neighbors, coworkers, etc. for noncompliance. Wonder what the reward will be. If this weren't disturbing enough, it raises serious concerns about cross-agency access to the private health records that would be "required" for "enforcement purposes". We're looking at a very slippery slope here, IMHO. But here's the thing that liberals, who proclaim themselves to be more intelligent than the rest of us, don't seem to get, and it's a fundamental flaw in most things they do, believing that they're saddling "the rich", or "employers", etc. with the staggering bills for their social programs: There is NO WAY in our economy to cleanly isolate "costs" to one group while providing "benefits" to another in our economy. Costs on the input side either come out the other end in the form of increased prices, or the input costs are cut in various ways, by reducing labor, cutting services, etc. Sometimes, both things happen. When the minimum wage was raised in 2008, for instance, not only were 146,000 restaurant jobs lost but there was an average of 5% increase in restaurant menu prices. Everyone will pay for this bill, whether in the form of fewer services available, increased waiting times for services (which carries huge costs), higher premiums and/or increased copays, and probably a general rise in prices on the goods produced by many companies that get hit with these increased costs. Just what the impact of the Medicaid mandate will be is almost too much to contemplate, but it will ripple through the state budgets in a variety of unpredictable ways - again impacting all citizens in one way or another. It's sheer madness, or deliberate blindness, to believe that "the rich" (cough!) are going to pay this bill. One way or another, every one of us will get stuck with this bill in the end - pun intended. If you don't learn anything else in life, learn this: THERE ARE NO FREE LUNCHES - FOR ANYONE. No matter how much the liberals would like to repeal fundamental economic principles, they can't. All they can do is dream up programs that carry costs that will ultimately be borne by every single person in the nation, one way or another, and there's not one single example ANYWHERE in the sad history of social redistribution to suggest otherwise. ;