Last week supporters and opponents of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act anxiously awaited the Supreme Court’s ruling on the law’s individual health insurance mandate. Imagine their surprise when the Court announced, in a majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts, that there is no individual health insurance mandate.
Rather than a “penalty” imposed on anyone who “fails to comply” with the “requirement to maintain minimum essential coverage,” which is how the law itself describes the policy, Roberts perceived a “tax” that hinges on whether one follows the government’s totally nonmandatory guidelines regarding health insurance. This implausible relabeling of reality was Roberts’ desperate attempt to uphold the provision formerly known as a mandate without endorsing a boundless view of Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce. Instead he endorsed a boundless view of Congress’ tax power that could prove even more dangerous to liberty… via Reason.com.
IRS officials on background tell FOX Business the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on health reform gives the IRS even more powers than previously understood. The IRS now gets to know about a small business’s entire payroll, the level of their insurance coverage — and it gets to know the income of not just the primary breadwinner in your house, but your entire family’s income, in order to assess/collect the mandated tax.
Plus, it gets to share your personal info with all sorts of government agencies, insurance companies and employers.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. “We expect even more lien and levy powers,” an IRS official says. Even the Taxpayer Advocate is deeply concerned. Continue reading →
The Supreme Court’s Obamacare ruling on Thursday cuts right to the very fabric of the relationship between a once-limited government and a once-free citizen, but the eternal struggle between liberty and tyranny endures. It is a beginning, not an end.
As enormously important as the high court’s Obamacare ruling is – and it’s huge – it’s not the final word. The legal and political dust has not yet settled, and it will take some time for the unpredictable ripples to form the powerful waves of history. Yet, history waits for no man, so we begin by asking: What now? Continue reading →
The Grey Enigma 