'Less costly' health care 'reform' to hit middle class hard

By Thomas Lifson

President Obama has recently begin speaking of a cheaper price tag for health care reform: 800 to 900 billion dollars. So how will a compromise bill achieve such savings? By a mandate forcing middle class Americans to buy expensive health care insurance that costs more and provides less coverage.

Investor's Business Daily does the hard lifting to focus on the legerdemain enabling the president to pretend he isn't raising taxes on the middle class, while forcing them to cough up as much as 15% of their income for mandatory health insurance.

... under a June draft of the Senate Finance Committee's cost-cutting compromise, a family of three with pretax income at 300% of the poverty level, or $55,000, would have to pay up to 15% of pretax income, or $8,250, to buy coverage - or else face a fine.

Assuming a qualifying policy is available at that price, it would almost certainly be a high-deductible plan. That means such a family would likely be required to pay upwards of 18% of their income before the first dollar of benefits kicks in. ....

The individual mandate is essential to the Democrats' health care vision because it's closely linked to provisions to prevent insurers from cherry-picking healthy customers or charging untenable rates to those with pre-existing conditions.

In other words, younger and healthier peoples' premiums are necessary to cover the costs of older and less healthy people who sign up.

If the government forces you to buys something expensive that you don't really want, does it matter whether it is called a tax or not?