If It Quacks Like a Duck...

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts surprised many this week by concluding that the penalty imposed on individuals for failing to obtain health insurance under the new Affordable Care Act is a tax. Taxes, unpleasant as they may be, are constitutional when properly levied by Congress. Roberts’ conclusion kept the law called Obamacare alive.

“Tax” is one of the dirtiest of words in this country, largely because of the perception that the revenues from taxes are wasted by the bodies that levy them or used for unnecessary purposes. It was a conservative, not a liberal, argument that the ACA created a new tax. The Obama administration bent over backwards to assure everyone that there was no “T” word involved.

The complaint about forcing people to buy health insurance through a penalty structure is that they are paying to support something they don’t need. But there are plenty of taxes we accept as necessary. We support fire and police departments, even though we could go decades without ever having to call either one for service. Their existence not only provides peace of mind – they are seen as being something that benefits everyone in the community. To a lesser extent, the same is true of public education – our taxes support it, whether or not we have children in school ourselves, on the grounds that educating children provides a public benefit. The principle behind the Affordable Care Act is the same, the public benefit being that easier access to health care provides for a healthier population, and less, not more, demand on expensive health care services.

Which federal agency gets to collect the penalty in the Affordable Care Act? The Internal Revenue Service, of course. Buying health insurance is a means of avoiding the tax. A common use of our modern tax structure is encouraging, or discouraging, behavior.

But one very American trait is our insistence on results – quick results, if possible. It remains to be seen whether the ACA will fulfill the expectations created by its supporters. There are plenty of us who simply don’t want to take that risk. In any case, that’s not the Supreme Court’s concern. Its job is over. Chief Justice Roberts and the majority have determined that it’s a duck because it quacks like one. It’s our job, and that of our representatives in Congress and the next president, to determine whether the duck should live – and if so, how it should live.