Euphemism du Jour: Train Wreck

Two articles about different aspects of ObamaCare came to my attention this morning. Both use the term "train wreck" in their titles.

First, John Stossel describes the new regulatory morass that the people in charge of your health will be mired in:

Government likes to think regulations can account for every possibility. Injured at a chicken coop? The code for that will be Y9272. Fall at an art gallery? That means you are a Y92250. There are three different codes for walking into a lamppost -- depending on how often you've walked into lampposts. This is supposed to give government a more precise way to reimburse doctors for treating people and alert us to surges in injuries that might inspire further regulation.

And that's just a sample from the 20,000 pages of new rules -- seven feet high, printed out -- that the regulatory apparatus has added since passage.

Second, John Kartch of Americans for Tax Reform paints a gory picture of tax time next year.

Before Obamacare, Americans facing high medical expenses were allowed a deduction to the extent that those expenses exceeded 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI).  Obamacare now imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI.  Therefore, Obamacare not only makes it more difficult to claim this deduction, it widens the net of taxable income. According to the IRS, 10 million families took advantage of this tax deduction in 2009, the latest year of available data. Almost all are middle class. The average taxpayer claiming this deduction earned just over $53,000 annually. ATR estimates that the average income tax increase for the average family claiming this tax benefit will be $200 - $400 per year.

And that's just (part of) the beginning, too. Other parts of ObamaCare being phased in over the next few years will draw out the agony.

I guess, as Nancy Pelosi put it, we are "finding out what's in it". Perhaps, in a literal sense, we did have to pass it to find out in concrete terms what unimaginable idiocy could gush forth from government bureaucrats. But was this lesson really necessary? Our founders' preference for a nation of "laws and not men" should have helped us know what debacle awaited us for placing such an important matter as our health in the hands of an unaccountable bureaucracy.

There's a lesson or two in this bag of goodies about handouts and government regulation. We'd better learn it and start applying it fast.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Supplied omitted link to second article.