WOLFEBORO, N.H.: Mitt Romney on Wednesday said requiring all Americans to buy health insurance amounts to a tax, contradicting a senior campaign adviser who days ago said the Republican presidential candidate viewed President Barack Obama’s mandate as anything but a tax.
“The majority of the court said it’s a tax and therefore it is a tax. They have spoken. There’s no way around that,” Romney told CBS News. “You can try and say you wish they had decided a different way but they didn’t. They concluded it was a tax.”
Romney’s comments amounted to a shift in position. Earlier in the week, senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said Romney viewed the mandate as a penalty, a fee or a fine — not a tax.
The Supreme Court last week ruled that the federal requirement to buy health insurance or pay a penalty is constitutional because it can be considered a tax. The requirement is part of the broad health-care overhaul that Obama signed into law in March 2010.
An identical requirement was part of the state health-care law that Romney enacted when he was governor of Massachusetts.
“The governor believes that what we put in place in Massachusetts was a penalty and he disagrees with the court’s ruling that the mandate was a tax,” Fehrnstrom said Monday on MSNBC.
Romney told CBS on Wednesday that the court opinion makes clear the state’s mandate is not a tax, but a penalty.
The back-and-forth within the GOP over what to call the mandate illustrates how difficult the health-care issue is for Romney. The law he signed as governor in 2006 moved Massachusetts toward universal coverage and became a blueprint for Obama’s overhaul. But Romney has spent much of the presidential campaign shying away from talking about it, preferring instead to keep voters focused on the slow economic recovery under Obama.
Both measures require individuals to have health insurance, require that businesses offer health care to their employees and provide subsidies or exemptions for people who can’t afford it. Both also impose penalties on people who can afford health insurance but don’t pay for it.
Despite calling Obama’s mandate a tax, Romney insisted that the court ruling did not mean that he raised taxes as governor of Massachusetts. He said Chief Justice John Roberts was clear in the court’s 5-4 ruling that states have the power to mandate purchases using mechanisms other than taxes.
“At the state level, states have the power to put in place mandates. They don’t need to require them to be called taxes in order for them to be constitutional,” Romney said in the interview.
Romney’s comments to CBS came in an interview conducted in Wolfeboro before he marched in the town’s Fourth of July parade, holding hands with his wife, Ann.
