The people who brought you "The Great Swine Flu Scare Of 2009" now want to bring you "The Great Global Health Tax Of 2010".  The World Health Organization is actually considering a plan to ask governments all over the globe to impose a global consumer tax on such things as Internet activity and everyday financial transactions like paying bills online.

Seriously.

Apparently the goal of such a plan would be to raise "tens of billions of dollars" which would then be used to "transfer" pharmaceutical research, development and manufacturing capabilities to the developing world.

Transfer them from where?

Places like the United States?

So let's get this straight. 

According to the WHO global tax plan, they want to do the following three things....

#1) Take away research, development and manufacturing jobs from us and give them to the developing world at a time when we can least afford it.

#2) Give much more money and power to the idiots who brought us the global swine flu scare of 2009.

#3) Make us pay for all of it.

The World Health Organization's "Expert Working Group" is also thinking of asking wealthy nations such as the United States to set aside fixed portions of their gross domestic product to finance the shift in worldwide research and development.

What in the world?

No, we do not want a global tax.

No, we do not want to redistribute our wealth.

We've got a big enough debt problem right now without the WHO trying to dip their greedy little fingers into our pockets.

Thanks to Obama and the U.S. Congress we are already flat broke as a nation.

So does anyone think that it is a remotely good idea to give billions of extra U.S. tax dollars to the WHO?

But the truth is that some nations are already taxing their citizens for the benefit of the WHO.

A program known as UNITAID was started in 2006.  The goal of UNITAID is to battle HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis around the globe.  This program is financed by a "solidarity contribution" levy of anywhere from $1.20 to $58 on airline tickets.

Ouch!

The nations already imposing this tax include France, Brazil, Chile, Norway and the U.K.

Apparently it has already raised around a billion dollars, and the WHO says that more countries are getting involved. 

The truth is that this is yet another reason why the United States needs to leave the United Nations.

Not reform it.

Not try to get it to change.

The U.S. needs to pull out of the United Nations and never look back.

Otherwise, there are going to be relentless attempts to impose global taxes, global rules, global regulations and global mandates on the American people.

But we do not want global government.

We never have and we never will.

The Democrats are taxing us dry already.  Just how bad would things be if we let a bunch of global bureaucrats dig around in our pockets?

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."
-Benjamin Franklin
 
It is now official.  A majority of Americans are willing to give up liberty in order to be safer from terrorism.  A stunning new McClatchy-Ipsos poll has found that 51 percent of Americans agree with this statement: "it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism."

Only 36 percent of those polled agreed with this statement: "some of the government's proposals will go too far in restricting the public's civil liberties."

So are Americans really this stupid?

Have they really been brainwashed into willingly giving up their essential liberties just so they can feel a little safer?

Maybe they have.

After all, a new USA TODAY/Gallup poll says that 78 percent of Americans approve of the new full body scanners that the U.S. government wants to install in all U.S. airports.

So almost 4 out of 5 Americans are perfectly fine with letting airport security officials gawk at their naked bodies just so they can feel a bit safer from terrorists.

How sick is that?

The truth is that when Americans allow themselves to become so wimpy and so fearful that they are willing to throw many of their most important freedoms out the window, those responsible for the terror scares have won.

In fact, Amerika (formerly America) is very quickly becoming a brutal police state where privacy is a thing of the past and where free speech and alternative points of view are openly repressed.

For example, in a 2008 academic paper President Barack Obama's appointee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs advocated "cognitive infiltration" of groups that advocate "conspiracy theories".

Infiltration of groups with alternative viewpoints that the government doesn't like?

Do we live in East Germany?

Apparently we do.

Americans do not care about their freedoms and liberties anymore, so now they are being taken away.

And apparently the message of the most recent polls is that Americans are perfectly fine with that.

The Obama administration has decided that Barack Obama can break any law he signs if Obama decides that the law in not constitutional and that he can do this whenever he wants and that he does not even have to tell anyone what he is doing.  Seriously.  At least George W. Bush informed that American people that he intended to break the laws that he was signing by including a "signing statement" when he objected to something in a bill.  As bad and as unconstitutional as that was, now the Obama administration is taking things to a whole new level by saying that even if Barack Obama signs a bill into law, the Obama administration can still break any law in that bill if the Obama administration decides that it is an "unconstitutional" limit on Obama's power.

In essence this bring the United States even closer to a dictatorship.

If the president has the ultimate power to decide what is and what is not constitutional, and if the president also has the power to break any laws that he does not feel are constitutional, then the reality is that there are very few limits on his power.  The only limit is essentially how big of an imagination he has.

While Bush was in office, he challenged about 1,200 sections of bills, and Barack Obama continued this "signing statement" pattern during his first few months.

However, Obama has not issued a signing statement since last summer.  Last June, Obama issued a signing statement that claimed that he could openly disobey a new law requiring administration officials to push the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to adopt certain policies that Congress wanted.

That signing statement sparked a tremendous backlash on Capitol Hill.

Since then, the Obama administration has decided that instead of issuing signing statements, Obama will just ignore the provisions of any bill that the Obama administration believes are unconstitutional.

For example, the Obama administration has flatly disregarded a new law passed by Congress that forbids State Department officials from attending United Nations meetings led by nations deemed to be state sponsors of terrorism.

So now Obama gets to essentially have his cake and eat it too.

He can sign into law the various bills sent to him by Congress but can also ignore anything in them that he does not want to follow himself.

So can anything be done about this?

The truth is that this type of thing could quickly escalate into a constitutional crisis.  But with the Democrats in charge of both Congress and the White House, the odds of Congress complaining to the Supreme Court about what Obama is doing are so low as to not even be worth mentioning.

So for right now at least, Barack Obama will get to continue to openly break many of the laws that he is signing and nothing will be done about it.

Welcome to the new Amerika. 

Most Americans who support the health care reform bills currently being rammed through Congress believe that this process will result in Americans receiving universal health care that is cheaper, more efficient and that gives all of us more choices.  But that is not the case at all.  Rather, Americans will soon have much fewer health choices which are much less efficient and for which they will end up paying much more for.  In fact, there are a ton of really nasty surprises for the American people in the health care reform bill.  The following are 10 of the nastiest of the surprises....

#1) All Americans will be forced to buy health insurance.  If you don't like the new system, that is too bad for you.  If you don't pay up, you will be heavily fined and you could ultimately end up in prison.  There will simply be no escape from participating in this health care system until you die. 

#2) Americans will have basically two places from which to get health coverage - either their workplaces or from "insurance exchanges" set up by the government.  If you are not employed, you will have one choice. 

#3) Americans will have much fewer health plan choices under the new system.  The new "insurance exchanges" that the government is setting up will offer four health plan templates that have been mandated by the government.  Each plan will contain health benefits that have been specifically dictated by government agencies.  You will be forced to pay for the benefits contained in these plans whether you need them or not.  So if you will never need substance abuse treatment or prescription drug coverage that is too bad - you will be forced to pay for them.

#4) Americans will be eligible for a federal subsidy to help them buy health insurance, but only if they earn less than 400 percent of the poverty level ($88,200 for a family of four).  However, an individual will only be eligible for a subsidy if their employer does not offer health coverage and if that individual purchases a "government-approved" plan from a "government-approved" insurance exchange.

#5) The Congressional Budget Office estimates that a family insurance plan for a typical family of four will cost approximately $15,000 per year when the health care bill comes into full effect in 2016.  How do you think most American families will react to that?

#6) The Congressional Budget Office also says that the coverage provisions in the Senate bill will cost the U.S. government $200 billion annually by 2019 and that these costs will grow by 8 percent per year.  Considering the fact that the U.S. government is already drowning in red ink, where in the world will all of that money come from?

#7) American workers will be hit with nasty new taxes under the new system, including a .9 percent Medicare payroll tax increase that the Senate bill would implement.

#8) There is also a 40 percent tax on "Cadillac" health plans in the Senate version of the bill.  That tax is not indexed to inflation, which means that eventually every health plan will be subject to the tax.

#9) Even if your current health plan is "grandfathered" in, your current health insurance company will be required to meet new federal mandates that will dramatically increase the cost for any health plan it offers you right now.  Guess who the health insurance companies will pass those costs on to?

#10) Senator Harry Reid has inserted some really wicked provisions in the Senate version of the health care bill that will make it virtually impossible to repeal the Obamacare bill once it is adopted.  So the reality is that once it is voted in, the American people will be stuck with it forever.

Remember the days when Americans could freely contract with private health insurers for whatever level of health coverage that they wanted for themselves and their families? Those days are over. In the health care bill being rammed through the U.S. Senate, Americans are given 4 health care plan templates from which they must choose and 2 places from which they can get that coverage (either their workplace or from a state-based "insurance exchange"). You see, this is the new socialist America - where health care choices are limited and where conformity is required.

4 Health Care Plan Templates

Many Americans who are supporting the health care reform bill are excited because they think that finally all Americans will get the health care coverage that they want.

But unless what all Americans "want" is contained in the four standardized U.S. government health plan templates that is most definitely not going to be the case.

You see, private health insurers will still be involved in offering health insurance under the new plan, but their health plans will be required to meet the standards set forth by the U.S. government templates. The New York Post puts it this way.....

Consumers must buy policies from their employers or through the exchanges — but, either way, their choice of coverage is limited to one of four basic insurance plans that the government sanctions.

Private insurers will still compete to offer policies but must model their coverage on one of these four templates. In short, the Senate bill explicitly standardizes health benefits and then establishes elaborate mechanisms (including subsidies and penalties) to pay for them.

According to an Associated Press breakdown of the Senate bill, the most basic of the health plan templates would pay about 60 percent of health care costs per year, while the most "advanced" of the health plan templates would pay about 90 percent.

The vast majority of Americans have not even noticed that their health care choices are about to be scaled way back, but the Wall Street Journal has.  In a scathing editorial, the lack of flexibility and choices in these "health plans" was pointed out....

Unnoticed by the press corps, the Congressional Budget Office argued recently that the Senate bill would so "substantially reduce flexibility in terms of the types, prices, and number of private sellers of health insurance" that companies like WellPoint might need to "be considered part of the federal budget."

But even among the four health plan templates there apparently is not that much of a difference.  The New York Post describes it this way.... 

While these four plans vary from low- to high-cost options, the benefits offered under them are pretty much the same. The difference between the cheaper and pricier plans is mostly the amount of cost sharing (e.g., you pay less for insurance if your co-pays are higher).

So what does this mean?

It means that everyone is going to end up with essentially the same health insurance.

2 Places To Get Health Coverage

The Senate health care reform bill also gives Americans just two places from which to acquire health care coverage.  Either they can get it from their employer, or they can buy it from one of 50 state-based insurance "exchanges".

Reuters has posted a breakdown of how these state-based insurance exchanges will work....

The proposed government-run insurance option would be dropped from the bill. Instead, the federal government would contract with insurers for two national or multi-state health insurance plans that would be offered through the new insurance exchanges. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which oversees health policies for 8 million federal workers and their families, would manage the public plans.

So what does this do to health insurance companies?

It fundamentally changes their nature.

The Wall Street Journal put it this way....

With formerly private insurers converted into public utilities, for instance, they'll inevitably be banned from selling products like health savings accounts that encourage more cost-conscious decisions.

1 Giant Socialist Mess

So where does this leave the American people?

It leaves them with a giant socialist mess of a health care system.

The American people are going to be furious when they learn about the minimal health care choices that they have under this new system.

Experienced U.S. doctors will leave or retire in massive numbers.  One recent poll found that 45 percent of American doctors said that they would quit or retire if Barack Obama's health care reform plan is adopted. 

If there is a mass exodus of doctors, it would absolutely cripple the health care system in America. 

The level of medical care in America will also probably experience a dramatic decline if the Senate plan is adopted.  Just ask veterans or those on Indian reservations how well U.S. government managed health care works. 

The truth is that whenever the U.S. government gets involved in health care it quickly becomes a nightmare.

But now that is what all Americans will have - government planned health care.

The new Wall Street Journal editorial about the Senate plan expressed amazement at "the hubris of an Administration that thinks it can substitute government planning for market forces in determining where the $33 trillion the U.S. will spend on medicine over the next decade should go."

The truth is that the U.S. government is replacing a capitalist health care system with a socialist one.

The American people are not going to like it, doctors are not going to like it, employers are not going to like paying for it and the U.S. government is going to drown in red ink trying to pay for it.

But the Democrats are going to ram it down our throats anyway.