Obama’s Health-Care “Reform” Contains Hidden Tax Penalties for Unsuspecting Taxpayers

ObamaCare won’t just raise taxes on the rich, and impose tax penalties on people without approved health-insurance plans. It will also dramatically change tax laws so that “taxpayers will be fined for honest mistakes,” explains prominent New York tax lawyer James M. Peaslee. That’s true even if the mistake resulted from a confusing tax rule, and the taxpayer “tried in good faith to comply with the law.”

(Keep in mind that the health-care bill backed by Obama is over 1,000 pages long, and some of its most prominent supporters have ridiculed the notion that they themselves should read the bill before voting on it).

FactCheck.Org says that Obama is not telling the truth about whether abortion would be subsidized by the health-care bills he backs: “Despite what Obama said, the House bill would allow abortions to be covered by a federal plan and by federally subsidized private plans.”

Obama is also lying about whether ObamaCare will cover illegal aliens. While illegal aliens are exempt from the fines and tax penalties contained in ObamaCare, even though U.S. citizens are not, illegal aliens can access ObamaCare’s benefits since the Congressional sponsors of ObamaCare have blocked ways of checking on whether participants in ObamaCare are illegal aliens.

The Obama Administration has criticized the Congressional Budget Office for pointing out that ObamaCare will cost more than a trillion dollars, pressuring it to reduce its cost estimates. But the tab will actually be much, much more than a trillion, since medical entitlements invariably cost more than predicted. (The Administration now suggests, “without offering any details,” that it will somehow be able to reduce that cost by cutting Medicare).

The Administration’s tendency to low-ball costs was illustrated again on Friday, when it finally admitted that the deficits over the next decade will be two trillion dollars more than it previously claimed (that’s $2,000,000,000,000), bringing projected deficits to over nine trillion dollars.

While the poor economy has played some role in driving up the deficit, most of the deficits are explained by reckless, out-of-control spending, such as the $800 billion stimulus package, which violated Obama’s campaign promise of a “net spending cut.”

The stimulus package is projected to cut the size of the economy “in the long run,” according to the Congressional Budget Office. That didn’t stop Obama from falsely claiming that only the stimulus would prevent “disaster” and “irreversible decline.” (Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than those that imitated Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worst in the recession.)

The Obama Administration claimed its stimulus package would deliver a short-run “jolt” that would quickly lift the economy, but unemployment actually rose rapidly after its passage. The stimulus package destroyed thousands of jobs in America’s export sector, and subsidized welfare and waste. The stimulus also ended ended welfare reform, giving states’ new incentives to expand welfare rolls.

ObamaCare is full of special-interest giveaways and constitutionally-dubious provisions like racial preferences and set-asides, which has led to ObamaCare being criticized by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. (ObamaCare also contains lots of waste and subsidies for politically-correct things like “cultural competency,” while cutting spending on crucial things like anesthesia).

Obama’s own advisors have called into question his claims about how ObamaCare will supposedly let you keep your health coverage while cutting costs.

“ObamaCare is all about rationing,” says one of Obama’s own advisers, Martin Feldstein. Feldstein earlier noted that Obama’s health-care plan would harm people with insurance, and massively raise taxes.

Fact-checkers say Obama is lying about health-care. Obama often contradicts himself. In the very same speech, Obama claimed that Medicare is “unsustainable” and “running out of money,” then contradicted himself by claiming that “Medicare is a government program that works really well,” making it a model for national health-care.

Feldstein, a Harvard professor, warns that “For the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, the Obama health plan is bad news. It means higher taxes, less health care and no protection if they lose their current insurance because of unemployment or early retirement.” Obama’s plan would “cost more than $1 trillion,” and raise the top federal “income-tax rate from 35 percent today to more than 45 percent,” he notes.

As a CNN commentary earlier noted, Obama’s plan would take away “5 freedoms,” including the freedom to choose your doctors, the freedom to choose what’s in your plan, the freedom to keep your existing plan, the freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, and the freedom to choose high-deductible coverage.