Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[Alex G]

Lots of crazy stuff on the airwaves re the SCOTUS’s upholding of the ACA.
http://jaredbernsteinblog.com/health-care-reform-leftovers/

The Inane “Is It a Tax?” Debate: R’s are viciously attacking the ruling because it introduces a new “tax” on people who don’t have coverage. As I and many others have stressed, this tax is a free-rider penalty. It is a PRF—a personal responsibility fee for not saddling the rest of us with your health care costs, thereby imposing an implicit tax on the rest of us. And it hits 1-2% of the population.

You thought personal responsibility was supposed to be a conservative value? Not, apparently, when the dreaded tax word is invoked.


I get it: silliness pervades in an election year…but really? Seriously?!? Taxes happen in societies— according to a Supreme Court justice from a saner time, they’re “the price we pay for a civilized society.” And in this case, they’re the price we pay to offset a negative externality by which the behavior of a small minority of citizens imposes a cost on everyone else.

To be ashamed to make that case is to cede the field to Norquist and co.