Aside from the obvious drain of tax dollars out of town and into the Federal coffers to fund this atrocious program, consider this when it comes to your wallet:

Unless you opt out, you will see your paycheck reduced by anywhere from $150.00 to $240.00 per week. The more productive you are and the more you are compensated will determine how much you pay within that range up to an estimated total of $2000.00 per year per taxpayer. And for what? Do you even know? Care to hazard a guess? Let me tell you. This expense is the result of a hidden requirement inside the Obama health care bill that instructs all employers to payroll deduct, automatically, each worker’s “fair share” without their consent and without requiring them to tell employees that they have a right to opt out. What are you getting in return – a mandatory catastrophic health care coverage. Of course the estimated cost of this program is not indexed to inflation, so as time goes on, costs will rise across the board, and like the social security trust fund, the Medicare/Medicaid trust fund, this trust fund will contain no more than IOUs and will most likely reach the same fate as social security and medicare.

Social security is not paying out more than it takes in. What are the odds of you collecting a social security check? Medicare has been cut back and seniors as well as others will now find themselves paying more for less. Many may even be denied services or access to experimental treatments that may make a difference in their lives and in assessing the efficacy of the new treatment for others, simply because of their age or the location/type of a particular disease. e.g. pancreatic cancer, stroke with devastating but not fatal results, advanced treatments to save limbs rather than simply amputating them to save costs. But, the good news doesn’t stop here. No. No. No. It’s the bill that keeps on giving.

The new law has a direct impact on Billerica where several medical device manufactures employ significant numbers of our citizens and pay a healthy chunk toward the town’s tax base. The fact that these manufactures were going to be hit has been well-known for a while now. Yet, where were the voices of our elected leaders here in town and on the State level? Was there any organized effort to advise the President and the Congress to reconsider this bill in light of the direct impact of it on our citizens? Did they point out that we are a town already burdened by many empty homes, unemployed or under employed workers, a broken school system in desperate need of revenue to just bring it up to par, and a myriad of other needs/situations? I don’t recall that. However, it seems that now that it’s too late, many of these so-called leaders are ready to hang and effigy of Governor Patrick as a symbol of his ties to President Barak Obama and a champion of a broken Massachusetts health care system. They are doing so, not because that is the entire truth, but to hide their roles in the fiasco.

Then, there are the indirect effects that will hit our town. AT&T reported that it will have to write off over a billion dollars due to changes forced by the health care law that removes subsidies in the form of a tax deduction of $1300.00 per employee that they were originally granted to convince them to fund a prescription program of President Bush’s administration to better cover their employees. I have to admit that the subsidy was on the order of me receiving a new car from the government and then using the cost of that care for a write off on my taxes as an expense. The concept is wrong-headed and highlights how similar the Republicans have been to the Democrats in-so-far as honoring their fiduciary responsiblity to keep spending to only that which is necessary. However, this deal (I prefer the term, bribe) was offered in exchange for something – covering the expansion of retiree pension benefits – something the government has no right to become engaged in. Now, not only will the company be hurt, but so will the retirees and current employees. The irony is that in the case of AT&T, these workers/retirees are/were union members and in most cases supported President Obama, the Democrat Congress and the health care legislation.

However, the ultimate victims of this deal will be the taxpayers – you know them; they are the ones who get out of bed each day and actually WORK to produce something other than harmful legislation that steals from the middle class and the upper class and redistributes it to the lower/poor class who have done nothing to just lay claim to what they are taking other than to eat, drink, move their bowls, breathe, drop out of school and out of life in general and expect Nanny Obama and Co. to force the rest of us to care for them and reward their perverse, illegal, or otherwise anti-social behavior. If this were going to help people afflicted with catastrophic illness or injury that prevented them from working and contributing toward their own welfare, that would be one thing, but this is not for that. In fact, the only consideration given this latter group was that they could be held up as human shields in a way similar to the terrorist using ordinary citizens as human shields to reward the former group composed of people like those associated with ACORN. So, once again…don’t you dare close your wallet, because Uncle Sam wants you (but mostly your money).

And then there is the undisclosed government takeover of the student loan program that was hidden in the health care bill as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago either here or on the BWG bulletin board. Yep, that’s right. I won’t expand on that here…simply googles student loan and health care legislation; you’ll find several links that clearly show yet another government takeover, termed nationalizing, of industry. By the way, this week the government also took over the mortgage industry as well. I thought I’d mention this last on in case your missed it.

Now with all of this news, how many jobs do you suppose will be created in Billerica? How many start ups of small business do you envision? How many layoffs do you suspect may hit us on top of what we’ve already endured? How well do you think your paycheck is going to stretch as inflation hits and your check is decreased to pay for health care and the hidden catastrophic care now mandated under penalty of fines?

I apologize for not limiting my discussion to Billerica only topics for those who find it annoying to read about a bigger picture than their blinders allow, but there you go…