The T
George S. Patton Party
That's the dilly-o.
You can disagree with that contention, but your words really don't trump the words of the President himself in calling for the passage of the ACA and the mandate as a crucial part of it.
how is the mandate different from having to contribute to social security?
Social Security may be viewed as insurance. Alternatively it may be viewed as a form of savings. Either way, it is a tax and it is acknowledged AS such.
The "analogy" to mandatory insurance as a pre-requisite to owning a vehicle and obtaining a registration from the state or as a pre-requisite to having a driver's license has ALWAYS been a false analogy. Driving is a privilege, as you know. It is not a "right." The States HAVE a right to condition the granting of that privilege upon certain conditions.
The ACA's individual "mandate" is allegedly NOT a "tax." It can't be a tax, in fact, for a variety of legal reasons. President Obama himself has insisted that it isn't a "tax."* And it also isn't conditioning some privilege on certain requirements. It is a compelled duty imposed on all citizens (actually all people in the USA) premised upon some fanciful notion of the Commerce Clause.
It transforms the entire notion of a limited government of enumerated powers on the BASIS of the commerce clause (together with the necessary and proper clause) into an unlimited government with no bounds upon its powers.
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* Here is an excerpt of one article explaining pretty concisely why it cannot legally BE a "tax."
-- Why ObamaCare Mandate Penalty Cant Be a Tax*|*Independence Institute* * * *
The 16th Amendment grants Congress the power to collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived. The Supreme Court has defined derived income to mean undeniable accessions to wealth. Here, the mere refusal to purchase a product is not any kind of income or accession of wealth.
Likewise, the penalty cannot be an excise tax. An excise tax is imposed on an event or item, such as the acquisition of a machine gun. Again, there is no event to be taxed, and never in American history has a federal excise tax been imposed on an Americans inactivity.
Thus, the tax is constitutionally a direct tax similar to a head tax, or a tax on real estate. The Constitution requires that such taxes be imposed in Proportion to the Census. The mandate penalty is not so apportioned.
Congress does have nearly limitless authority to create income tax deductions and could have created one for the cost of buying approved insurance. Courts, however, will not be ruling on the constitutional bill that Congress might have enacted but, rather, on the unconstitutional one that Congress did enact.
As the example you give regarding driving...seeing as driving on Government roads is a privilege, they may set the rules as to their use as to who may or may not use them and under what circumstances.
Healthcare is and always be a personal resonsibility of the individual. The Government has no business telling anyone they have to have it to fit thier mold.