The wisdom of Roberts' reasoning (Wow - did I really just write that?)
I don't think I ever expected to be writing about so much as a shred of wisdom to be found in an opinion by Justice Roberts. But I guess stranger things have happened (although I can't quite think of any at the moment).
Justice Roberts quite rightly found that the distinction between "tax" and "penalty" is, in this case at least, one of mere semantics. The modest penalty imposed for non-compliance with the individual mandate is, functionally speaking, a tax designed as a revenue offset against the cost of providing care to those uninsured persons who present themselves at hospital emergency rooms for treatment and who ultimately do not have the resources to pay for such treatment. He recognized that Congress has the right to levy such a tax.
I think the President was quite foolish in his insistence some time back that the penalty was not a tax. It clearly is, right down to the agency designated to collect it, namely, the IRS. I think the President was afraid of the "t" word, and so tried to spin it as something else. I understand what his thinking likely was, but I believe it was misguided. The fact that the President tried to spin it as something other than a tax, however (for whatever reason), doesn't change the underlying functionality of what that penalty really is, as Justice Roberts correctly recognized.
A far better way for the President to present the issue would have been to characterize the non-compliance penalty as a tax to offset the costs borne by taxpayers of those who freeload off the system -- in other words, counter the emotionally laden "government is forcing you to do something" argument with another emotionally laden, and closer to the truth, argument about freeloading. Unfortunately, by insisting that the penalty was <i>not</i> a tax, he has left himself open to criticisms that he was attempting to mislead voters.
Ultimately, though, I don't think this will hurt the President.