Romney Says Mandate Is Not a Tax

Didn't Mitt Romney get the memo? He says that the mandate in the Affordable Care Act isn't a tax:

Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign on Monday rejected a Republican attack on the Affordable Care Act, repudiating a contention made in last week’s Supreme Court decision that the law’s requirement that individuals carry medical coverage amounts to a tax. 

The Romney team’s refusal to invoke the word “tax” with regard to the individual mandate puts the candidate at odds with others in his party at a moment when Republicans are attempting to capi­tal­ize on the Supreme Court’s decision, which deemed President Obama’s health-care law constitutional. Some Republican-led states are now trying to thwart the legislation’s effort to cover the poor.

The whole thing is pointless bickering over meaningless semantics: penalty, tax, what's the difference? It'll be reported on your taxes if you fail to buy health insurance, so why not let the Republicans have their hissy fit and call it a tax?

But it's irrelevant, because only freeloaders and fools will be paying this tax. A completely optional tax you pay only if you're careless or obstinate isn't really a tax at all. Anyone with a good job will be covered by their employer. Poor people will be covered by Medicaid. Responsible self-employed adults and real small businesses will finally be able to buy decent insurance policies without getting shafted by insurance companies. People who really can't afford it will be given subsidies or exemptions.

Is Romney's disagreement just posturing? Did he get permission from his commanding officer, Grover Norquist, to disagree on the question of whether the mandate is a tax? Is Grover letting Mitt do this in order to make Romney seem somehow more acceptable to independents in the fall? If it is, it shows the depths to which Republicans have to stoop to make their candidates seem electable.


Romney says the first thing he's going to do if elected is repeal Obamacare. Except that Romney says that he's going to keep the part about adult children being covered. And stop insurance companies from kicking you off. And get rid of preexisting condition clauses and lifetime limits. And now he's saying the mandate's not a tax. Basically, Obamacare is identical to the Massachusetts health care law Romney signed.


So, the only real problem are some details about things like how "small" 50-person companies should cover employees. Which means that the law just needs some tweaking around the edges, something which Obama has long said was true: he had to make a lot of compromises to get it passed, and would be glad to fix such problems.

In the end, the only real policy difference between Romney and Obama is that Romney would let some states continue to force hospitals and the rest of us to foot the bill for the health care of obtuse jerks who refuse to take care of themselves.

Sorry, Mitt. We're tired of paying the way for freeloaders. Wait—I'm starting to sound like a Republican!