No, right-wing media -- the health care mandate is NOT a "massive new tax"

[DesertRat]

Right-wing media have responded to the Supreme Court's decision upholding the health care mandate -- the requirement that most Americans purchase health insurance or pay a fee -- by claiming that President Obama has instituted the "biggest tax increase in the history of the world" and a "massive, regressive tax on all Americans." In fact, the fee will only be applied to a small percentage of people who choose not to purchase health insurance.

http://mediamatters.org/research/201206280008

[Harmony Blue]

1. Those who already have insurance

will not see any increased taxes.

[Igel]

4. True.

After all, a tax is only what you pay directly to the government.

If a new reg says that you need to replace your roof every year, that's not a tax. It's a regulation. They also have costs. But they're not "taxes," in the strictest sense.

Many people use the word tax to include such hidden costs imposed by government. We can stick to a very narrow definition--the kind of linguistic authoritarianism tha many of use despise in others--or we can admit that polysemy and extended definitions exist. In that case, all we need to do is insist on that we define our terms.

Because of the ACA my health care costs have already gone up. My employer was self-insured--had been for 50 years--and pushed everybody towards insurance with a $2500 or $3000 deductible. Sounds crappy. Then they issued us a card good for the first $500 or $1000 of out-of-pocket health-care costs, including copays for visits and insurance, and counted that money towards your deductible amount. End result: Fairly good. They can't do that any more, their lawyers said, because of ACA. So I pay about $190/month more for what's likely to be worse insurance in case of anything serious, and that includes a copay for every doctor visit. It's not a $2300/year tax increase, narrowly construed, because I'm paying the increase to an insurance company and to doctors (the doctors would have gotten the same amount of money). However, because of ACA I'm paying $2300/year more because as a result of the requirement, somewhere along the line somebody will pay less-perhaps government, perhaps somebody making $30k/year.

[railsback]

2. These are the same people

who turned end of life counseling - an existing program for decades that had cost extra, but then became non-fee based program under the ACA - into Death Panels. There is no logic over there, just hate for the black man.

[librechik]

3. ...and it's massive only if you think 2.5% is massive.

When we are talking about Repub dicks, 2.5% counts as massive, so...