Kelly Anderson Wright

I’ll admit, some of the provisions in the health care bill seem like the right thing to do. I don’t want anyone dumped by an insurance company just because they need heart surgery, do you? It doesn’t seem right to put limits on health insurance coverage for long-term disorders like cancer, diabetes and Parkinson’s, either. Protecting ourselves against unforeseen catastrophes is why we buy insurance, right?

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BUT (and that’s a big but, obviously)…

… there are so many things wrong with this bill, it seemed to myself, half of Congress and the majority of Americans, that we should have just killed the bill and started over, with the parts we could all agree on.

We know by now that that didn’t happen. It might happen in the future, with Republican lawmakers threatening to repeal the bill, and a dozen or more state governors, including Nevada’s Jim Gibbons, saying they intend to challenge the constitutionality of the bill in court.

But I can’t think about that right now, because the health care bill makes me sick to my stomach. Literally.

I am nauseated by the fact that under this health care bill, the IRS will grow in size, power and reach, under the ruse of health care reform. Previously just a tax collector, the Internal Revenue Service will be allowed to go where no government agency has gone before. Under this bill, the IRS will make me prove that I have health insurance, and specifically, the “right kind” of insurance, as they define it, for me and my family. And if I don’t meet their standards and their rules, I will suffer the wrath of the IRS.

Specifically, under this bill…

The Internal Revenue Service will function as the government’s chief enforcer for health care reform… monitoring both businesses and individuals to certify whether they have the insurance coverage the government requires.

The [IRS] will [monitor and enforce] compliance with the individual and employer insurance mandates… how and when health care is paid for, when health insurance is purchased… [and] minimum level[s] of health insurance…. [The] IRS [will] monitor individuals and employers and punish those who do not comply.

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Every individual and most businesses [will be] required to report to the IRS, on their tax returns, whether they have purchased or provided the required level of coverage and disclose to the IRS which months, if any, in which they failed to do so….

How will they accomplish these new job responsibilities? They will hire 16,500 new IRS agents, to be paid for with $10 billion of taxpayers’ money, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). The additional funding, which was not included in the bill’s $940 billion price tag, will be necessary to carry out the IRS’s new health care insurance monitoring and enforcement duties, says the CBO.

Did you hear that sound? Government just grew again, creating 16,500 more IRS busybodies who will have the legal right to poke their noses into our businesses, our homes, our families and our very lives, thanks to Nevada’s Sen. Harry Reid (D), who hopes to be re-elected for a fifth term this November.

Call me crazy, but that’s just sickening. I’m not the only crazy, sick person out there, am I? I wonder, if we did a national poll, what percentage of Americans would say they don’t want the IRS to increase in size, scope or power for any reason, and especially not for health care reform?

A number comes to mind. It has lots of nines in it. Suddenly I’m feeling better. The nausea is subsiding.

Is it November yet?

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