Tom Harkin Admits: "Better Coverage" In Obamacare is a Redistributive Tax

He said this about 20 minutes ago, in the Health Care hearing.

He began by noting people's objections to paying for maternity care, despite being 60 years old. He first claimed to find some validity in that objection. But then added, "But then I got to thinking about it."

He analogized the forced payment for health care you don't need to Property Taxes. He said something like, "Well my wife and I aren't having more kids, and our kids are all grown up. So why should we pay property taxes for schooling children?"

He added, in a Stage Whisper, that we are living in a "Society," which to him constitutes some kind of argument about our responsibility to pay for others' needs.

Now, Obama and the rest of the Democrats are claiming, falsely, that people are "getting better coverage," which is their answer to why people are being forced to pay double or triple what they used to pay.

The suggestion is that this "better coverage" benefits them personally -- that they themselves are reaping the benefits from this alleged "better coverage."

But Tom Harkin just justified the skyrocketing premium rates honestly -- but too honestly, in a way that exposes the fiction of Obama's claims.

The maternity care costs imposed on 60 year olds does not benefit those 60 year olds. It is not "better coverage" for them. What it is, of course, is a forced subsidy towards 28 year old women, taking from one group to redistribute wealth (in the form of subsidized health costs) to someone else. The 60 year old, who has no need of maternity care, pays for it, so that the 28 year old woman, who does need it, can pay less.

In the case of a property tax -- or any tax -- we understand that that money is being taken from taxpayers to pay for general government spending, which may or may not (and probably will not) benefit the taxpayer himself.

But Obamacare's "better coverage" is explicitly not supposed to be tax on the healthy for the benefit of the unhealthy, or on the infertile for the benefit of the fertile. He keeps selling this "better coverage" not as a hidden tax, but as a boon that personally benefits the recipient.

Tom Harken, accidentally, just exposed this as lie.

Obama swore up and down he wasn't taxing people in order to pay for his boondoggle. Tom Harkin just admitted that's precisely what he's doing.

Furthermore, Harkin's only justification for the soaring costs of premiums is that it is a tax intended to benefit other people, redistributing money from some to pay for others. It can only be justified as a redistributive tax.

posted by Ace at 12:31 PM

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