Every true “independent” voter in the United States should be clamoring for the full and immediate repeal of ObamaCare after watching a few days of Barack Obama’s Shutdown Theater.  Do you really think the man who vandalized the World War II Memorial with barricades to make elderly veterans suffer will hesitate a microsecond to use your health care as leverage against you, the next time you defy his commands?  You’re not “independent” in any meaningful sense whatsoever if you’re comfortable with what’s going on here.

This was always a top goal of ObamaCare.  Dependency is control.  The Ruling Class does not fear people who rely upon it for food and medicine.  Until now, the first nickel of every proposed “spending cut” – even using the ludicrous Washington definition of the term, which really means “reduction in the rate of spending growth” – has come from teachers, police, and firefighters.  For the rest of history, if ObamaCare is allowed to stand, that first nickel will be coming out of health care.  If Sequester Theater wasn’t enough to convince you this was coming, its big-budget Shutdown Theater sequel should have removed all doubt.

The first threat will be made against subsidies paid to lower-income (and, distressingly, middle-class) people who need welfare to afford Obama’s ridiculously overpriced insurance.  The people who made it past all those glitches and crashing web pages on Launch Day discovered massive premium hikes waiting for them, over 200 percent in many cases, particularly the young voters who must be shaken down for cash to keep the system working.  This is one reason the actual number of applicants is a more closely guarded secret than Obama’s college transcripts.  It was tough for people to use the inexcusably bug-ridden system… but a lot of them punched out when they saw what awaited beyond the bugs.

Many of these ObamaCare plans have enormous deductibles and co-payments, particularly where people with pre-existing conditions are concerned.  That will swiftly become another mechanism of control.  Republicans tempted to capitulate in the current shutdown drama, because they’re convinced people will hate ObamaCare even more once they get to know it, are missing the point.  Democrats will use the system’s failures as leverage to make it bigger, the same way every government program grows through failure.  What happens to people who get socked with those gigantic out-of-pocket expenses?  Why, they become the next great Democrat constituency.  The Dems will “fight hard” to make taxpayers cover those poor folks.  You’ve heard Obama thunder about how nobody should go bankrupt due to health expenses, haven’t you?  He’ll say the exact same thing when he’s the bill collector.  The bigger those bills, the better.

One brave soul with a pre-existing condition managed to make it through the craptastic billion-dollar ObamaCare system and discovered $597 monthly premiums with a fourteen thousand dollar yearly deductible.  The fine for non-compliance with King Obama’s generous offer turned out to be $4000 per year.  Hesitate to give the King his tithe, and you’re going to lose your drivers’ license, and maybe get a nice tax lien on your house.  But his loyal army of bureaucratic servants will be happy to vacuum your tax… no, wait it’s a penalty, only Tea Party extremists would call it a tax… no, wait it’s a tax, Mister Chief Justice, we swear on a stack of sacred paperwork!… right out of your bank account.  Wait until the first tax/penalty bites cost some poor soul a few thousand bucks in bounced check charges… all so he can afford the privilege of pretending he’s as free as a pre-Obama American.

It’s a horror show, sure… but the computer kinks will eventually be worked out (and if you refuse to pay higher taxes to make that happen, you’re a teabagging anarchist!) and there will be some people who decide they like their benefits, especially if they come from a blue state where Democrats have already comprehensively destroyed the health insurance market.  Their happiness will be cultivated; complaints will be ignored; jaw-dropping failure will become an irresistible demand for more spending to “fix” everything.  The resulting system will provide leverage to ensure public submission on any number of other issues.  Today, the price of defying despotism is a line of barricades across public memorials.  Tomorrow, it will be the credits and subsidies that keep our centrally controlled health insurance system groaning along.  The day after that, it will be access to your doctor under single-payer socialized medicine.

If you value your freedom and dignity, this is the right time to fight ObamaCare to the end.