You may have been aware that the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Act, better known as ObamaCare, mandates that chain restaurants with at least 20 locations display nutritional information about the items on their menus. You may not, however, have been aware that the same law also requires vending-machine operators to display calorie counts for all items in their machines.

In a March 13 op-ed for the Washington Post, President Barack Obama’s lead pollster, Joel Benenson, wrote: “When it comes to health care and insurance, once reform passes, the tangible benefits Americans will realize will trump the fear-mongering rhetoric opponents are stoking today.”

ObamaCare in microcosm: Beginning this school year, the University of North Carolina will require all students to have health insurance. Students who are not covered by a private plan will be automatically enrolled in a campus plan — a plan that, if not for the efforts of a pro-life student group, would have forced every enrollee to be covered for elective abortions.

“Four Massachusetts community hospitals are investigating how thousands of patient health records, some containing Social Security numbers and sensitive medical diagnoses, ended up in a pile at a public dump,” began an August 13 Boston Globe report.

Medicare’s chief actuary Richard Foster has been a thorn in the side of both Republican and Democratic Presidents.

According to legend, in the bad old days before the federal government got into the business of regulating pharmaceuticals, Americans routinely fell prey to unsafe “snake oil” products. Consumers, so the story goes, are simply unable to sift through all the necessary information about available drugs to determine which ones are safe and effective; and pharmaceutical companies, ever eager to cut costs and increase profits, care little for the ill effects their drugs may have on consumers. Thus, the government must step in and force companies to make their products safe in order to protect benighted Americans from the unscrupulous drug manufacturers.

If you think what you’ve seen of ObamaCare thus far is bad, think again. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

“Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, rebuking President Barack Obama’s administration and giving Republicans their first political victory in a national campaign to overturn the controversial health care law passed by Congress in March,” reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

By now most Americans are familiar with the broad outline of ObamaCare: Everyone is required by law to purchase health insurance, with a tax penalty assessed upon those who fail to comply. Insurers may not refuse to cover those with pre-existing conditions nor charge them higher rates. The federal government is expanding its role in providing health insurance. And did I mention that all of this is supposedly going to reduce both healthcare costs and the federal deficit?

The growing movement for state nullification of ObamaCare may get another boost on August 3. Missouri’s primary election, to be held on Tuesday, August 3, includes a ballot question asking voters if state law should be amended to “deny the government authority to penalize citizens for refusing to purchase private insurance or infringe upon the right to offer or accept direct payment for lawful health care services.”