Two Years On: Obamacare

I agree with you there. Unfortunately, as I see it, you can't simultaneously call your dog a cat -- no, wait, insist that it's a cat -- while also insisting that it be treated as a dog.

 

It is semantics. It is absolutely just semantics.

 

The government no more mandates that I buy insurance than it mandates that I buy a Prius.

 

It's the difference between me taking $5 out of your wallet and me knocking $5 off a debt you owe me.

 

Is there another "tax" in which the payment goes to a private company, instead of to the Government?

 

That is not the tax. The tax is the penalty.

So to answer your question, yes.

Hybrid vehicles.
Charitable contributions.
Tuition.
First-time home.
Insulation.

 

At state level yes but at federal level no.

 

You mean like subsidies to farming and business?

 

I don't care what it says. That's just politics. That's just to sell it to the public because you can't sell "tax." It would be on every Romney commercial from here to the election.

I care what it does.

What it does is offer a tax credit to people who purchase insurance. And you know it's a tax because it's pegged to income levels - and the government knows well and good that the only authorized federal tax, constitutionally, is an income tax.

 

Subsidies are taxes.
Inactivity is activity.
Mandates aren't mandates, penalties aren't penalties.

When you get to redefine words to mean whatever you want them to mean, no wonder these cases seem so obvious.

 

You are too smart to think that's what's going on here.

There is no practical difference between the "mandate" and a tax credit for buying a Prius or getting a masters degree. None.

The government is the one changing words around.

"This isn't a Christian cross posted on top of the White House. It's a ... lowercase 'T'!"

Some of you would nod approvingly.