If the Obamacare individual mandate isn’t a tax – and the IRS has no lawful power to collect it as a tax – then why did I receive a threatening letter from the IRS claiming very much otherwise?
The letter states that I “have an unpaid shared responsibility payment” of $695 that is owed – imagine that! – because I did not sign up for Obamacare or otherwise send money to the health insurance mafia. The mafia which succeeded in hiring the federal government as its Luca Brasi – its enforcer – to threaten and bully people into buying insurance.
This is an important distinction. Insurance is just a policy; it is not medical care. It means the insurance mafia may pay some of the cost of medical care, some of the time. But you will pay for the insurance all of the time. This is why the insurance mafia is a mafia.
Mafias use force against unwilling victims, to line their pockets. They will claim it’s for “protection” – a synonym for “coverage.”
Obamacare is doubly outrageous for this reason. Bad enough that this country has slipped so far away from the idea that government exists to keep the peace and toward the idea that it is our Mommy, from which we are never to be emancipated – like Down Syndrome children.
But it is a far worse thing that our liberty and our money have been taken from us for the financial gain of private business. Socialized medicine is objectionable on many grounds but at least in countries where it exists, the profit element is removed.
In this country, it is all about profit – at gunpoint. You are, after all, not being asked. Because you are not free to say no.
Not without being threatened with violence, including murderous violence.
The mafia is enormously rich; its executives rake in seven figure incomes and spend their days in fancy suites in high-rise office buildings with marble foyers and chromed/paneled elevators.
These parasites use the government to pluck us – like the Geese who exist to provide down for pillows. Like the plucked goose, we may receive “care” at some point. But not necessarily. It is at the discretion of the mafia – which may always raise the price of its protection/coverage.
Whereas we have no discretion about paying them. Not for care – but for “coverage.” ‘
And what if “care” isn’t necessary?
Why pay for what one does not need?
This is the reasoning I followed when, after my divorce, I decided to skip “coverage.” I have not been to a doctor’s office in years. Because I have not had need of doctoring. I’m healthy and fit. I take care of myself and rely on good habits and good genetics. That is my health insurance. I judge the paying of large sums of money each month – several hundred dollars, at least – for “coverage” I don’t use and probably won’t need to be a very poor use of my money. I consider it a much better use of my money to save it in the event I need it for something – including medical care.
But if I don’t need medical care, I will still have my money. If I buy “coverage,” I will not. So I did not buy “coverage.”
And – like many Americans – was under the impression that when the Supreme Court somehow discovered the authority in the Constitution for the federal government to mandate that Americans buy coverage, it was only able to do so by parsing the so-called Individual Mandate – the obligation to buy “coverage” – as a not-tax.
Suposedly, the not-tax differed from the income tax and other actual taxes in that the feds could not collect it in the same manner as other taxes.
There was an Out.
For us.
The odd ducks who for reasons which seem judicious to us prefer not to be “covered,” prefer not to be taxed both by the government and the insurance mafia. That Out was – so we were led to believe – that the government lacked the power to tax us for not buying “coverage.” It could only deduct from our tax refunds a kind of punishment levy. This being the so-called “shared responsibility payment” described in the letter sent to me.
But it could not otherwise force us to pay.