A tale of two blog posts

First up is a nice long post at Kevin Baker's, detailing the clusterfuck that is Obamacare.

The other blog post I want to highlight is from Mr. Porretto at Eternity Road, and it's quite instructive:

My grammar school years: 1958 through 1964. Annual tuition at St. Catharine's grammar school: $96 per student-year. School tax on my family's house, market value $19,000: $200 per year.

In those days, a fair number of persons could afford to pay both the school taxes and St. Catharine's tuition. They grumbled about it, of course, but it was an overwhelmingly Catholic neighborhood, and few families would permit their kids to attend the "public" grammar school if they could do anything at all to avoid it. Of course, the local school board assured concerned residents that it was doing everything it could to hold down taxes, but...well, neighbors, you know how things are.

Time passed. The school tax on a home in Rockland County, NY accelerated sharply, just as it has virtually everywhere else in the United States. Fewer and fewer of those hundreds of Catholic families found that they could afford both the property taxes and St. Catharine's tuition. That was especially so for those with three or more children. Eventually, St. Catharine's, itself beset by sharply rising costs, under the pressure of greatly reduced enrollments, had to increase its tuition markedly. That, of course, further accelerated the decline in enrollments.

In 1963, when I entered eighth grade there, there were 44 students in that class. The 2007 eighth-grade class had only 20, and the first-grade class had only 9. The school closed permanently at the end of June, 2008.

The government doesn't have to shut down private insurance companies. All they have to do is make sure you don't have the money to purchase insurance from those companies. "Oh well, we need to raise your taxes. What, you don't want to stop those poor people from getting healthcare do you? You heartless bastard!" I'm willing to bet that most people wouldn't have to be hit by the taxman too hard before you couldn't afford to write that check to the insurance company every month.

The power to tax is the power to punish, and the power to control. If you can't pay your insurance bill, then the insurance companies fold. It's that simple. And you get moved under single-payer, government-controlled Obamacare. Congratulations, citizen! You are now ward of most excellent and hospitable government-run hospital, the best in world! You are young, we pay to fix you! You are old? Ah well, is for good of the state, comrade!

Don't let them get one. fucking. inch. You'll regret it for the rest of your life. Which will be dramatically shortened once you get into a government run "health care" facility.