A taxing debate on heath care


Our opinion: Mitt Romney does a semantic about-face on Obamacare. That comes at the expense of better explaning his own health care policy.

A tax? You mean President Obama’s health care law imposes a tax on people who refuse to buy health insurance to pay for the care they inevitably will need, rather than make society pay instead?

How about that, says Mitt Romney in the latest of his ever-changing positions on the government’s proper place in the health care market.

A tax? Does that mean, Mr. Romney, that Obamacare is ultimately funded much the same way as a very similar law you so admirably steered to passage as governor of Massachusetts?

We hardly expect Mr. Romney to concur with our assessment of a position he’s held for all of five days now, and one that’s so starkly at odds with the view he stated early last week about the federal mandate requiring everyone to have health insurance.

Mr. Romney, alas, is every bit as disingenuous about what’s now indisputably the law of the land as President Obama had been. Mr. Obama’s reluctance to call what’s so obviously a tax for what it is had the White House instead relying on an interpretation of Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce that almost killed the Affordable Care Act.

Only now, after some deft judicial maneuvering by Chief Justice John Roberts, can Mr. Romney assail the health care tax, punitive as it is, and can Mr. Obama defend it with the certainty of legal cover.

All the while, the rest of us might lament that the critical debate over health care is stuck in what might be seen as a distinction without a significant difference.

A tax? Or a penalty?

Or perhaps both?

In Massachusetts, after all, the official definition of Romneycare says anyone who can afford insurance but still won’t obtain it must “pay a penalty through their tax returns.” Mr. Romney called it a tax when it only applied to Massachusetts, only to denounce it as an unconstitutional penalty for so much of his campaign for president, before again calling it a tax last week.

Why can’t there be a broader focus, on how almost everyone will have health insurance, thanks to a government mandate that’s been upheld by the Supreme Court?

And on how this tax spares millions of Americans who have paid to treat the uninsured in one way or another ­— through taxes, or hospital bill, or insurance premiums. The cost is in there, just sometimes more hidden.

And since when is the idea of taxation to pay for health care — taxes on almost everyone, that is, not just those who qualify as health care scofflaws — so outrageous? We’ve long done it with Medicaid and Medicare. We await word from Mr. Romney on, for instance, those two huge government programs and the taxes that sustain them. We await, that is, not a further contesting of semantics but rather a more expansive view of how to sustain such a large, critical part of health care delivery for the poor and the elderly.

Parsing definitions might have made for an intriguing political opening for Mr. Romney — even if such conservative critics as The Wall Street Journal editorial page think that he blundered. But it’s still no substitute for the substance of health care policy the country has every right to demand from a serious candidate for president.

5 Responses

  1. Victor Blackthorne says:

    ” A tax? You mean President Obama’s health care law imposes a tax on people who refuse to buy health insurance to pay for the care they inevitably will need, rather than make society pay instead?” A bit of honesty, please. The price of health care is being loaded to pay for those who can’t pay. Also those deemed too old to benefit from the approximate treatment will, no matter what they have paid, not get it. Thus problems associated with old age well be shortened by the government’s bring death closer.

  2. Charlie says:

    Apparently the TU did not do it’s homework. All this law will do is put more people on the medicaid roles. People who are unable to find insurance that is less than 8$ of household income are exempt. So if a policy cost $5,000 the person must make more than $62,500. The same group of people will still not have insurance.

    But there is a bigger question. Why should people like Warren Buffet be forced to support the insurance industry? Why should they not be FREE to chose how to pay for their health care? Make no mistakes about, the insurance industry has the democrats on their payroll

  3. Victor Blackthorne says:

    If you check the details of Obama care you will find that approximate is the correct term – in that it will not reflect your physician’s best assessment of what you need.

  4. Skip says:

    Arguing before the Supreme Court one day that the penalty is NOT a tax, and arguing the next day that the penalty IS a tax did make President Obama’s legal team look like fools.

  5. bassjig34 says:

    This paper is daft if it believes this will lower the cost of health care. Also, you fail to mention the billions of additional taxes being raised through various excise taxes etc. I do not know the answer to the problem but I do know it is not Obamacare!