It looks like a tax, smells like a tax, and the Supreme Court says it must be a tax. But politicians in both parties are squirming over how to define the Thing in President Barack Obama’s health care law that requires people to pay up if they don’t get health insurance.
The problem for Obama is that, if the Thing is indeed a tax, he is by definition a raiser of taxes on the middle class, which he promised not to be.
If that sounds like an opportunity for Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney, well, it’s not that simple.
Obama’s health care law is closely modeled on the universal-coverage plan Romney achieved as Massachusetts governor, and that plan contains a penalty for noncompliance similar to the one in the federal law upheld by the court last week.
So if Obama is a raiser of taxes, so is Romney.
Contortions have ensued over what to call this health care Thing.
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