Obamacare: Not a tax after all!

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I should have known better than to accept anything Republicans said at face value. Even I believed that Obamacare, or at least the part of it where people have to pay a penalty for not buying insurance, was “a tax.” So what, I said. So it’s a tax. It’s 1% of people who might pay 1% of their income for lacking personal responsibility and being “free riders.” I’m cool with this “tax.”

But it turns out not to be true at all.

Apparently if it were a tax, the SCOTUS would have thrown the case out due to lack of jurisdiction. They can’t actually hear a case on taxes until someone has actually paid the tax. The fact that they did hear and rule on this case proves that, at least according to the Court, Obamacare is not a tax.

2 thoughts on “Obamacare: Not a tax after all!”

  1. Roberts specifically called it a tax otherwise the ruling would not have made sense. Medicare is a tax and therefore calling the mandate a tax Roberts could rule in favor. Less clear is iff the value of private insurance ( held by most teachers) would become taxable income.

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  2. No, Robers specifically said it wasn’t a tax. Because if it were, the SCOTUS would have had to refuse to hear it on jurisdictional grounds. He said the individual mandate was constitution under congressional authority to levy taxes, which is a different thing.

    Frankly, it’s legal quibbling. I think “a tax” is a perfectly reasonable way to refer to the penalty one might have to pay if one refuses to get insurance. The only reason I bring up such a twitchy distinction is because Republicans are going to scream “tax tax tax!” all the way into November, hoping to nudge a couple of percentage points out of independent voters. I don’t think they should be able to get away with that.

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