A Tax By Any Other Name

                The hypesphere of infotainment has chewed on the Affordable Care Act, disaffectionately known as “Obamacare,” for months.  After Thursday’s ruling by the Supreme Court, the hype hawkers are choking on it.

                Among the small group of corporate behemoths that control the lion’s share of what we see and hear, “the most trusted name in news” and “fair and balanced” are both doing damage control after erroneously reporting that the keystone of Obamacare, the individual mandate, had been struck down.  CNN and Fox News both might have avoided embarrassment had someone bothered to actually read the court’s decision rather than apparently just glancing at the first couple of paragraphs.

                Perhaps it was the rush to be the first to report the breaking news that contributed to their oversight.  Perhaps it was the inability of a new generation of producers and reporters weaned on the abbreviated communication of the 21^st century - sound bites, streaming headlines, texts, blogs and status updates – to digest compound sentences.

                The Age of Information is delivered to us in endless streams of 0’s and 1’s. Computers “think” in binary code.  Imagine two switches. Both can be off. Both can be on. The first one can be on and the second off, or first off second on.  Everything digital from a simple text to a sophisticated animation is, at the root of its existence, nothing but ones and zeros.

                People are not computers. Our brains are vastly more complex than even the most sophisticated thinking machines. Unfortunately, many of us do not even begin to tap into the potential abilities nestled between our ears.  Perhaps it is just easier to see everything in terms of black or white, good or evil, conservative or liberal, yes or no…zero or one. 

                Whether we agree or disagree with the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, many of us would be more comfortable with a zero or one decision by the court. Fox and CNN certainly tried to provide us with that comfort.  Unfortunately for the reputations of those popular providers and unfortunately for those of us weary of the endless talk about Obamacare, that is not what happened Thursday.

                The Affordable Care Act had its genesis in the idea that Congress could require Americans to make a purchase under the commerce clause. The Supreme Court ruling struck down that idea and said that Congress does not have the power to require Americans to purchase anything.  Zero -and that is what CNN and Fox reported. However, the court also said that the ACA can be funded through the power of Congress to tax. One? No; not exactly.

                The Supreme Court’s decision gave us a new tax, which is no surprise to readers of this column. “Tax” is not a word to be tossed around lightly in an election year. “Mandate” or “penalty” sounds better, but candy coating a suppository does not improve its basic qualities. If we want everyone in America to have healthcare and if we want them to have quality healthcare (two very different propositions) then someone has to pay for it, and this legislation crafted by the insurance industry will not be cheap.

                Now back to our binary discussion. Did Obamacare stand or fall – one or zero? Well, Congress can’t force us to buy insurance, but they can tax us to pay for someone else’s insurance, just as current workers are taxed to pay for someone else’s retirement – zero and one.  The court went a step further.  The original ACA relied on the states to implement the program and threatened to pull Medicaid funding if a state did not comply. The Supreme Court said that this was unconstitutional – zero. So what we are left with in the Affordable Care Act is a completely different piece of legislation than was originally intended – a string of zeros and ones entirely appropriate to the digital age.  We will pay for it. That part was never in question. However, the states can choose to comply or not. The democrats will head into the elections defending a tax increase. Last but not least Congress, should they decide that everyone in America should purchase a subscription to CNN or the Fox News Channel, will be forced to call the measure what it truly is – a tax.