ObamaCare's Retroactive Calorie Mandate

Another mandate has been discovered in the ObamaCare legislation and it's totally unenforceable. Get a load of this piece of socialist insanity.

A mandate buried in the health-care bill President Barack Obama signed in March is now confounding not only the vending-machine operators who are supposed to follow it but also the federal regulators who are supposed to enforce it.

The Food and Drug Administration has ruled that the provisions in Obamacare that mandate that restaurant owners and vending-machine operators disclose the calorie contents of the foods they sell retroactively took effect on the day Obama signed the bill.

The FDA, however, has not been able to give vending-machine operators complete and final guidance on how they should make their machines comply with the law, thus causing “confusion” and “frustration” in the industry, and leading the agency to refrain for now from enforcing the provision.

Section 4205 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) says companies with 20 or more restaurants or vending machines must disclose nutrition content for standard menu items, and that for vending machines in particular, the company “shall provide a sign in close proximity to each article of food or the selection button that includes a clear and conspicuous statement disclosing the number of calories contained in the article.”

The FDA has ruled that this section of the law went into effect on March 23, 2010, when President Obama signed it, and has laid out detailed instructions for how chain restaurants should display the calorie counts of each menu item, along with definitions of each term involved in the regulation. The FDA has not managed to give similarly detailed guidance to vending machine operators. In fact, the FDA guidance produced on the question thus far has only reiterated the law’s mandate that companies that operate 20 or more vending machines must “immediately disclose, in a clear and conspicuous manner,” the number of calories contained in each snack item or drink.

Yep, you got that right. These far left wackos enacted a law that required immediate compliance by vending machine operators but provided no guidelines or procedures for companies to follow in order to comply with.

That's like my passing a law that requires you to jog around the world now. The only fly in the ointment is that you have to figure out how to do it, but do it now anyhow.

Also, notice how calorie counting of food is included in a piece of legislation that was supposed to be about health care coverage?

Why not also legislate what kind of meal you can have for dinner, what kind of cereal you can have for breakfast, or how many beers you can have a month?

And then these nut jobs wonder why businesses do not want to try to expand nor hire anybody. They have no idea what overreaching legislation is going to be passed next, nor what will be found buried in existing legislation.

Do you really trust these guys with your health care?