Gripe homeostasis.(THE STRAGGLER)(tax policy; health insurance)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

NOT my favorite time of year. Taxes, for one thing. As a freelancer, working from check to check, the nearest I get to the sly painlessness of the salaryman's withholding tax is quarterly "estimated" payments. Figure out how much income you will have next year. (Ha!) Compute federal tax payable. Divide into four equal parts. Write checks: April, June, September, January. Repeat for state tax, unless you are wise enough (I'm not) to live in one of the nine states that don't tax ordinary income. That four-month gap from September to January is a nice touch. I suppose the authorities feel that to have a due date ten days before Christmas would cast too much of a pall over our holiday spirits. So instead they set the date at 21 days after Christmas, just as all the credit-card bills are coming due. I seethe, I fume, I groan.

Then, health insurance. Once again, the strong preference of the authorities that we all be corralled into salaried employment so that they can more easily watch us, record us, and harvest our labor, shines through the arrangements. If you yoke yourself to a corporate employer, some modest portion of your paycheck will be gently, unobtrusively snipped away to cover you and your family. Live by your wits, however, and monstrous demands from a health insurer thump into your mailbox every month. Worse, that phrase about "escalating costs of health care" that newspapers have set up permanently in type becomes all too real to you every January, as the annual rate hike takes hold. My monthly payment went from $857 to $973 this year, an "escalation" of 14 percent--quite modest, actually, in comparison with previous years. This, as credit cards and estimated taxes fill the mind. I groan, I seethe, I fume.

It is all wrong, all wrong. Income tax is, as Murray Rothbard said, "undoubtedly the most totalitarian of all taxes." Health insurance is the Antarctica of the consumer economy: vast, frigid, and well-nigh empty of humanity. My own insurer seems to reject all claims on principle, waiting to see whether we care enough about the item to spend three hours on the phone justifying it to rule-driven bureaucrats in distant call centers. Our most recent claim (child stung by wasp, allergic reaction, emergency-room visit, allergist called in) was turned down because the allergist's filing had not included a "provider license number." A letter informing me of this very nearly arrived in the same post as notice of the rate hike. After finally, on my fourth attempt, getting all the way through their labyrinthine call menu, I confronted the call-center penguin: "How am I supposed to know the doctor's darn license number? Why are you telling me this? Why don't you just call the guy and ask him?" Sorry, they don't do that. This is the service I get for a thousand bucks a month. I fume, I groan, I seethe.

Plainly, reforms are needed! Politicians, in this election season, make appropriate promises. Mrs. Clinton will shift more of the tax burden to the wealthy. John McCain will abolish the Alternative Minimum Tax. Mitt Romney will let me save interest and dividends tax free. John Edwards will simplify the tax ...