This time it’s a 3.5 percent tax on premiums from health plans sold on upcoming federal exchanges.

This latest Obama tax on the middle class was unveiled Friday during the release of 373 pages of new Obamacare regulations.

The tax will be imposed on insurers and paid by consumers.

It makes one wonder what other hidden tax, job-killing regulations and health-endangering meddling will be unveiled in a second Obama term.

“Health care should never be purchased with tax increases on middle class families.”

That was candidate Barack Obama on October 4, 2008.  Back then Obama opposed the individual mandate because it was a freedom-busting, multi-billion dollar tax increase paid directly to massive corporations.

But now Obama is a champion of his $600 billion middle class tax hike, otherwise known as ObamaCare.  Even worse? It was originally a Republican idea.

The Wall Street Journal’s chief economist confirms three-quarters of the tax will be paid by families making less than $125,000 in combined income a year.

Want real change?  Want solid principles?

Vote Libertarian.

The individual mandate is a Republican-conceived, Republican-born, and Republican-approved control.

Want real change?  Next time vote Libertarian.

…But what was truly revealing was how eager Americans are to control their own health care dollars. Forty-eight percent said they’d prefer it if their employers gave them the money to purchase their own coverage, compared to 41 percent who would not. Even more remarkably, 65 percent of Americans want Medicare payouts in the form of a credit for use toward a private health plan, compared to 24 percent who don’t. This is good news for Rep. Paul Ryan’s “premium support” proposal for Medicare reform.

All of this makes perfect sense in light of another finding. When asked to rate how much they trust various entities in “addressing their health care needs,” 61 percent said they have a “great deal of trust” in themselves—but only 15 percent said that of their employers, and 5 percent of the government.

What’s more, Americans want to make their own coverage decisions. Almost 70 percent said they want the same ability to shop around for “a less expensive or better [health] insurance policy” as they have for their auto insurance…

• 65 percent overall worry a great deal about gas prices; 63 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of Democrats agree.

• 60 percent overall worry a great deal about the budget deficit; 84 percent of Republicans and 42 percent of Democrats agree.

• 60 percent overall worry a great deal about the affordability of health care; 46 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of Democrats agree.

• 55 percent overall worry a great deal about unemployment; 61 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats agree.

• 46 percent of Americans overall worry a great deal about the size and power of the federal government; 71 percent of Republicans and 31 percent of Democrats agree.

Source: A Gallup poll of 1,024 U.S. adults conducted March 8 to 11, reported by The Washington Times Jennifer Harper.

Here’s what voters want to hear from you on.  So what is your campaign talking about?

1: The Individual Mandate Violates the Original Meaning of the Constitution

2. The Individual Mandate Rests on an Unbounded and Unprincipled Assertion of Federal Power

3. The Individual Mandate Cannot Be Justified Under Existing Supreme Court Precedent

4. The Individual Mandate Threatens the Foundations of Contract Law

“The cost of government healthcare programs will more than double over the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday,” The Hill reports.

“CBO’s economic outlook predicts that federal spending on Medicare, Medicaid and other healthcare programs will climb to $1.8 trillion — or about 7 percent of the entire economy — by 2022.   If healthcare costs aren’t contained and taxes stay at roughly their current levels, the debt will climb to “unsupportable” levels, CBO warned.”

That leaves Congress with two options:

1) Reform federal entitlement programs and shift them to more effective, less expensive private sector solutions, a fix supported by Libertarians.

2) Dramatically jack up taxes or engage in devastating levels of borrowing, which is supported by both Republicans and Democrats.  Either gimmick requires tax rates so high, and an expanded IRS so strong and powerful, you lose your right to keep what you earn and your children and grandchildren must compete for tax-ravaged paychecks in an economy decimated by bloated government spending.

But thanks to the inefficiency of government-run health care, the 69-year-old suffered in pain for nearly a year until he received treatment, and only after “repeated calls from himself, his doctor and his local member of parliament,” the Associated Press reports.

Denied treatment, David was forced to monitor his hernia with veterinary equipment, using an ultrasound machine intended to examine pregnant sheep.

Across the U.K., patients are lingering in pain and suffering longer due to the fact that under government-run health care, which Democrats and many Republicans support, government must slash funding for critical medical care and ration access to doctors in order to keep the system afloat — something not seen under consumer-driven care.

“For many hospitals, that means saving money by raising the threshold for who qualifies for treatment and extending waiting times for non-lifesaving surgeries,” the AP reports.

Libertarians have a better idea than the Democrat record of pushing for an American version of the U.K. debacle, and the Republican record of radically expanding dependence on government drug programs:

1. Establish Medical Saving Accounts.

Under this program, you could deposit tax-free money into a Medical Savings Account (MSA). Whenever you need the money to pay medical bills, you will be able to withdraw it. For individuals without an MSA, the Libertarian Party will work to make all healthcare expenditures 100 percent tax deductible.

2. Deregulate the healthcare industry.

We should repeal all government policies that increase health costs and decrease the availability of medical services. For example, every state has laws that mandate coverage of specific disabilities and diseases. These laws reduce consumer choice and increase the cost of health insurance. By making insurance more expensive, mandated benefits increase the number of uninsured American workers.

3. Remove barriers to safe, affordable medicines.

We should replace harmful government agencies like the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) with more agile, free-market alternatives. The mission of the FDA is to protect us from unsafe medicines. In fact, the FDA has driven up healthcare costs and deprived millions of Americans of much-needed treatments. For example, during a 10-year delay in approving Propanolol Propranolol (a heart medication for treating angina and hypertension), approximately 100,000 people died who could have been treated with this lifesaving drug. Bureaucratic roadblocks kill sick Americans.

One word.  ObamaCare.

Three of the nation’s larger employers sat down with journalist John Stossel on his Fox Business Channel program.  Stossel describes the interview for Reason magazine.

You may watch the interviews here.

Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, explained to Stossel how ObamaCare prevents employers from creating new businesses by imposing future costs that have yet to be determined.

“If I was trying to get you to fund a new business I had started and you asked me what my payroll was going to be three years from now per employee, if I went to the deepest specialist in the industry, he can’t tell me what it’s actually going to cost, let alone what I’m going to be responsible for,” said Anderson.

“You would think a piece of legislation more than a thousand pages long would at least be clear about the specifics. But a lot of those pages say: ‘The secretary will determine …’ That means the secretary of Health and Human Services will announce the rules sometime in the future. How can a business make plans in such a fog?,” writes Stossel

Even worse, ObamaCare endangers the health of Americans who can’t afford insurance on their own.

John Allison, former CEO of BB&T, explained to Stossel how Obamacare encourages employers to drop health insurance for employees.  Under the law, employers are forced to insure their employees. Employers who fail to insure their employees, but the $2,000 penalty is lower than the cost of a policy.

“What that means is in theory every company ought to dump their plan on the government plan and pay the penalty,” he said. “So you don’t really know what the cost is because it’s designed to fail.”  Companies that continue to offer insurance would run higher operating costs, which could force them out of business in a slow economy — costing thousands of jobs.

Who are hardest hit by ObamaCare’s onslaught of costs, regulation and government mandates?  Those on the lower rungs of the employment ladder.

“An owner of 12 IHOPs told me that he can’t expand his business because he can’t afford the burden of Obamacare. Many of his waitresses work part time or change jobs every few months. He hadn’t been insuring them, but Obamacare requires him to. He says he can’t make money paying a $2,000 penalty for every waitress, so he’s cancelled his plans to expand. It’s one more reason why job growth hasn’t picked up post-recession,” writes Stossel.

Want to kill jobs?  Inject the economy with higher costs, more government regulations and more government mandates — and do it in an arbitrary, unpredictable manner.

In that vein, ObamaCare is a lethal dose of economic poison, and the poorest Americans are suffering the most.