A READER sent this e-mail. I cannot vouch for the figures, but it is consistent with what I know of Obamacare:

I am a consulting engineer and make between $60,000 and $125,000 per year, depending on how hard I work and whether or not there are work projects out there for me. My girlfriend is 61 and makes about $18,000 per year, working as a part-time mail clerk. For me, making $60,000 a year, under ObamaCare, the cheapest, lowest grade policy I can buy, which also happens to impose a $5,000 deductible, costs $482 per month. For my girlfriend, the same exact policy, same deductible, costs  $1 per month. That’s right, $1 per month. I’m not making this up.

Don’t believe me? Just go to  http://www.coveredca.com , the ObamaCare website for California and enter the parameters I’ve mentioned above and see for yourself.  By the way, my zip code is 93940.  You’ll need to enter that.

So OK, clearly ObamaCare is a scheme that involves putting the cost burden of healthcare onto the middle and upper-income wage earners.  But there’s a lot more to it. Stick with me. And before I make my next points, I’d like you to think about something: I live in Monterey County, in Central California. We have a large land mass but just 426,000 residents – about the population of Colorado Springs or the city of Omaha. But we do have a large Hispanic population, including a large number of illegal aliens, and to serve this group we have Natividad Medical Center, a massive, Federally subsidized county medical complex that takes up an area about one-third the size of the Chrysler Corporation automobile assembly plant in Belvedere, Illinois (see Google Earth View).

Deana writes:

What the reader above is describing sounds absolutely accurate.

Just today, a representative of the State of Tennessee, Rep. Dianne Black (a former nurse), sent out a newsletter in which she said:

“Obamacare Premium Rates Skyrocket in Tennessee

Late last week, our states largest insurer – Blue Cross Blue Shield – was approved for a 36.3 percent average increase in premiums for 2016, with select premiums increasing by up to 59.5 percent. The President repeatedly promised Americans that his healthcare law would save families an average of $2,500 per year. Now, Tennesseans are seeing once again that nothing could be further from the truth. As I recently stated, “My House colleagues and I will continue taking action wherever possible to offer relief from the most onerous provisions of Obamacare, but this staggering rate increase is a reminder of why we need a Commander-in-Chief who will partner with us to start over on healthcare reform.”

Obamacare has nothing to do with improving care or access to care.  It is a power grab.  Once you control a person’s health, you control them entirely. And that is why when Dr. Ben Carson spoke out about Obamacare at the 2013 Prayer Breakfast it infuriated Obama so much that the White House contacted Dr. Carson afterward and demanded an apology.

I find that to be revealing that Obama felt he could demand that a U.S. citizen apologize to him for exercising free speech.

Terry Morris writes:

The writer’s numbers aren’t at all surprising to anyone paying attention. A few years back, and out of curiosity brought on partly by the birth of our youngest daughter, I compared the number of births for the year in my state to the number paid for by State, and/or, federal programs. I don’t recall the exact numbers, but I do recall that the ratio was upwards of 7:1, meaning that for every baby born in the state paid for by parents or their insurance, there were seven babies born paid for by state, and/or, federal programs in one form or another, i.e., so called “Sooner Care,” (which, contrary to popular belief, is federally funded), and through a program for illegal aliens called “Soon To Be Sooner Care.”

At the time I was more apt to punish myself in that I read the opinion sections of prominent newspapers in the state. Week-in and week-out the letters to the editor were always dominated by ingrates complaining that the “rich” were not paying “their fair share” of taxes. Very often these people revealed in their letters that they worked in the public sector. Not to disparage those who work in the public sector, but the deductions coming out of your checks every month are not the same thing as original taxes. Original taxes are paid by the private sector, and only by the private sector. What is coming out of checks labeled “taxes” is simply an indirect form of taxation leveled against actual taxpayers using you as a pawn.

I’m not nearly so eager to punish myself anymore by reading the drivel of people who pay no taxes yet truly believe they are shouldering a disproportionate portion of the tax burden. They can’t be convinced otherwise, so I don’t even try anymore. As has been said before, you can’t reason someone out of what they never reasoned themselves into to begin with.

Jonathan M. Smith writes:

I’m sympathetic with the opinions expressed in this thread, but I’d like to challenge the statement by Terry Morris that taxes paid by public-sector employees are actually paid by private-sector taxpayers. I’ve been a professor at a public university for twenty-five years, so I have a dog in this fight, but I believe there are good reasons to say Mr. Morris’s statement is false. It’s also insulting, since it equates the paycheck of a public-sector employee with a welfare check, or the loot of a highway robber. Let’s look at this in terms of what money actually is. When Mr. Morris pays his taxes he hands the government symbols that represent value he has produced for other people, or what we might call his labor. While those symbols (i.e. money) are sitting in government coffers, they still represent Mr. Morris’s labor. But once the government releases them to me in exchange for my labor, those symbols represent my labor, not Mr. Morris’s.

This is true even if we consider the government as no better than a highway robber, since the government may have robbed (i.e. taxed) Mr. Morris, but I have not robbed (i.e. taxed) the government. If a highway robber buys his dinner using stollen money, that money now represents the labor of the cook, not the labor of the highwayman’s victim. The labor of the highwayman’s victim was consumed by the highwayman. Likewise, the government consumes Mr. Morris’s labor when it pays me, whereupon the money represents my labor.

Laura writes:

I agree with Mr. Smith and I don’t understand Mr. Morris’s point on public sector wages. Even thought the money does ultimately come from the government, it is still a deduction on the earnings of a public employee.

Also, I should clarify that I do not oppose inexpensive medical care for the poor (I don’t think Mr. Morris does either), but medical care should not be in the hands of the government to the degree that it is with Obamacare.

Mr. Morris writes:

I’ll answer Mr. Smith’s objections more fully later, but in the meantime allow me to assure him (and all) that I do not equate public sector employment to government “welfare.” My definition of welfare is fairly specific, and as such its recipients does not include persons who provide a service or services equal to or surpassing in value what he or she receives in payment and benefits.

Welfare, in my definition, is the providing of benefits without the asking of any kind of valuable service in return; it is quite literally “free money” to those to whom it is provided without the asking of anykind of return on the investment. Now, presumably Mr. Smith is providing a service at least equal to, in value, what he receives in payment for that service. If this is so (and I have no reason to believe it isn’t in Mr. Smith’s case) then I have not equated his job to government welfare.

But that is all tangential to my point in any event. The issue is about who does and who does not pay actual taxes. And contrary to what you have said, Laura, the money does not originate with the government, it originates with the original or actual taxpayer. The government merely collects and redistributes it. Whenever the government “creates” new jobs, is it at Mr.Smith’s expense the government does this? I think not. No; for the government to create new jobs it must do so at the expense of the private sector.

Mr. Morris adds:

Oh, almost forgot: I am actually against most any form of government-provided healthcare unless and until it can be shown me it won’t ultimately turn into the “Affordable Care Act” becoming the prom queen. So to speak. :-)

Carolyn writes:

Mr. Smith thinks it is fine to rob one and pay another! It is my money to do with as I please….not to mention if I could pay him directly for teaching my child, instead of through the government’s many agencies and eventually to the university, how much less it would cost me….and how many other “laborers” I could support. The free market grows the coffers of those who work, not of those who collect and distribute.

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