The health police cometh

Along with countless others, we've been warning for months that socialized health care will mean socialized health. When every is paying for everyone else's medical bills, your personal fitness will become everyone else's business. Consequently, the state will crack down on unhealthy habits to try to save money.

Health care reform passed a week and a half ago and it's already happening. The FDA has announced strict new regulations on tobacco that will go into effect June 22.

The rules prohibit

sales of cigarettes or smokeless tobacco to individuals younger than age 18;

sales of cigarette packages with fewer than 20 cigarettes;

sales of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco in vending machines, self-service displays or other impersonal modes of sale, except in very limited situations;

free samples of cigarettes;

tobacco brand name sponsorship of any athletic, musical, or other social or cultural event, or any team or entry in those events;

gifts or other items in exchange for buying cigarettes or smokeless tobacco products; and

sale or distribution of items, such as hats and tee shirts, with tobacco brands or logos.

The new regulations also limit distribution of smokeless tobacco products and require that audio advertisements use only words with no music or sound effects.

In other words, tobacco companies are essentially no longer allowed to advertise their product, unless they want to pay for the equivalent of a radio public service announcement. Regulations on cigarette PR were already tight, but this latest clampdown makes it almost impossible for tobacco companies to do business. Congress also passed an anti-smoking bill last year that outlawed sweetened and light cigarettes, among other changes. Couple that with punitive state and federal excise taxes that have driven cigarette costs in New York up to $11 per carton, and you have an industry where it's almost illegal to sell a product.

Despite the fact that Obama is a former smoker and has struggled with quitting himself, his administration seems hell-bent on just making smoking illegal, period. It's the next logical bend on the road to socialized medicine.

Obama admits his health care bill will lead to single payer, again

Even more evidence that ObamaCare is just a waystation on the twisted road to socialized health care. Obama met with progressive Democrats on Thursday who were worried that his bill wouldn't wreck the health care system fast enough. Obama gave particular attention to Rep. Dennis Kucinich, one of two House Dems who voted against ObamaCare because they wanted a more progressive bill. (The other is Eric Massa, who's getting treated a bit differently by the White House.) Kucinich, you see, supports a single payer system.

But, said one attendee, Obama pointed Kucinich toward single-payer language that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was able to get into the bill. Kucinich fought for an amendment that would allow states to adopt single-payer systems without getting sued by insurance companies. Obama told Kucinich that Sanders's measure was similar but doesn't kick in for several years. "He definitely wrote it down," said one member of Kucinich, suggesting that he'd look into it.

Kucinich specifically introduced his amendment in the hopes that states would start setting up single payer systems. Eventually, those would evolve into a single national insurance bureaucracy. Bernie Sanders, who introduced the Senate version, is a self-proclaimed socialist. Obama can't use words that direct now that he's been elected president, but he did hint at his real intentions while with the progressives.

Obama argued to the group of progressive members that his health care reform bill should be looked at as the foundation of reform, that can be built on in the future. He asked them to help gather votes for the final health care battle and promised that as soon as the bill was signed into law, he'd continue to push to make it stronger.

In other words, this is only the beginning. It might take years or even decades, but eventually ObamaCare will bloom into a nationalized health system.

In fact, that's exactly what Obama said on the campaign trail a few years ago. Once again speaking in front of savvy progressives, he admitted that a public option would ultimately lead to a single payer system, which he supports. Here's the video: