Outstanding letter, Mr. Lassen. Thankfully, your view represents the majority of Americans, but we all need to push harder to warn people of the hazards of government-run healthcare. Whether or not you now have health insurance, Obamacare will cost you dearly. If you don’t have insurance, you will be required to buy it. (Find THAT in the Constitution!) The legislation specifies how much you will have to pay for the coverage before any subsidy kicks in. All during the campaign, Obama kept speaking about affordable coverage. Now it appears that his definition of “affordable” might be a bit elastic.

If your household income is $66,000 a year, slightly above the national average, Obama’s health care bill will require you to spend 12% of your income -- about $8,000 a year or almost $700 a month -- to buy health insurance before you get any federal subsidy.

Even those making less will have to reach deep into their meager resources to satisfy Obama’s statutory requirement. Families scraping by on only $44,0000 a year will have to pay 7% of their income (about $3,000) on insurance. Even those making just $33,000 will have to ante up 4.5% of their income (about $1,500) for health insurance. The required payments reach so far down the scale that those who are living at the federal poverty level of $22,000 will have to shell out 2% of their totally inadequate incomes ($440) for insurance.

That Obama is charging premiums to those living at or on the border of poverty is absolutely incredible! And this from a candidate who pledged that he would not tax the middle class! If you don’t have insurance, you will be socked with a mandate to buy coverage and pay a hefty proportion of your income to do it; and if you have insurance, you will be hit with an excise tax on the coverage. (In theory, it is the insurance companies that have to pay the tax, but the Senate Finance Committee “assumes” that they will pass the tax along to their policyholders.)

These costs make a mockery of Obama’s oft-repeated pledge to avoid any tax increase that would impact those making under $250,000 a year. He finances about half of his health care plan on the backs of the elderly by cutting Medicare and inducing scarcity and the other half by premium taxes and insurance purchasing mandates on the middle and lower middle class.

We need to make it absolutely clear to our representatives that THEY WILL BE VOTED OUT OF OFFICE IF THEY SUPPORT OBAMACARE. There is a website where you can pledge to vote against politicians supporting the bill. Representatives will then be informed of how many votes they are losing. It is called http://www.PledgeOfLiberty.com -- check it out.

Yeah..great letter. Another person on Medicare against any government run option for people that pay for your healthcare......in a GOVERNMENT PLAN.

***Families scraping by on only $44,0000 a year will have to pay 7% of their income (about $3,000) on insurance. Even those making just $33,000 will have to ante up 4.5% of their income (about $1,500) for health insurance. The required payments reach so far down the scale that those who are living at the federal poverty level of $22,000 will have to shell out 2% of their totally inadequate incomes ($440) for insurance.
***

Do you even have a clue what health Insurance costs? People that make 44k a year have to pay 3,000 for health insurance? That is 250 a month for a family? Where do you sign up?? There are alot of people in that income range that would jump on that.
And 125 a month for those making 33k and 36 a month for those making 22k (which is what more than half make in St Joe).Right now, it doesn't matter what you make. There are people in all income ranges spending 40 to 50 percent of thier income on health insurance. Right now, the same person making 20k a year will have to pay the 700 a month that will burden the 60k a year people. And don't bother disputing it ,because I have lived it.

And fixing Medicare is a great idea. How about we don't allow millions to be pilfered and scammed and then point to it and say it doesn't work.

Sometimes I wonder which side you're on, Mr. RK. The worse cost of Obamacare is this: it's only a matter of time before our tax rates soar to unprecedented levels to clean up this mess. That will affect ALL income levels -- a patented breach of our President's pledge not to tax those making $250K or less. Never in our proud history has the country spent so much, intruded as much or micromanaged our personal lives as much. It's like trying to extinguish a blazing fire with truckloads of fresh fuel. Doesn't anyone in Washington have any sense of responsibility or accountability? Does anyone rationally expect this economy to last any longer as we sink deeper and deeper in debt? We're literally on the edge of imploding, going bankrupt, and becoming serfs to a dictator. The value of our once-proud dollar will be as meaningless as the German Mark after WWII. The madness has to stop -- and stop now!

Do I have to choose sides? That is what is wrong with this country now.Nothing gets done to benefit anyone because the Senate is full of "sides". I do not agree with pretty much anything Obama has done (or hasn't done is more like it). They spend a trillion on bailing out companies and banks that don't deserve one thin dime, and waste it on bonuses, trips, private jets and over paid CEOs. Another 780 billion (with interest a trillion) on some phony stimulus to give ATT money to hook up rural internet access and profit from that, cash for clunkers to pump up numbers so Obama can look good, and every other crap project that some lobbyest got funded, spend billions on going to the moon and Mars..but when it comes to giving people something that would help like lower healthcare cost and an opportunity to get reasonable health insurance, and some how stem an out of control health insurance industry that should have an anti trust suit against them. That cost to much. Oh my gosh,...we can't do that.

And who is against it? Which SIDE??
The Health Insurance Companies (bribing politicians and spending millions on tv ads)
People that have employer paid insurance (including every single city, county, state, or federal employee that has great insurance that I pay for)
And the most Laughable? Someone on Medicare telling me how a government run option will never work and they are totally against it. Good..then get off medicare and go get your own damn insurance.

Yes, Mr. RK, there are very definitely two sides to choose. You can favor conservativism with its core beliefs of personal freedom, limited government, fewer taxes, fewer regulations and a rejection of the Big Government Nanny State. Or you can favor liberalism with its core beliefs of government largess, higher taxes, less freedom, free enterprise and a rejection of the individual over the State. It's not so much Republican vs. Democrats because they've tended to blur the line that divides them. But yes, very definitely, there are two sides to our politics and our culture. And frankly, when I see what the other side (liberals) are doing to take down the road to socialism, I will defend my core principles to my dying breath. Do we want to return to our forefathers' vision establish liberty and personal responsibility without government intervention? To me, definitely. Or do we want the path to the failed policies of liberalism and socialism, a system that spreads misery and higher taxes among everyone? I reject that belief, and I will everything in my power to stop them. Two sides? You'd better believe it!