Irony. Because Roberts declared it a tax, the individual mandate can now be eliminated in a tax reform bill.
Via Daily Caller:
Chief Justice John Roberts’s original 2012 defense of Obamacare was based on his understanding of the individual mandate as a “tax.”
Roberts’s defense of Obamacare derails arguments from numerous Democratic lawmakers, progressive activists and journalists that the inclusion of an individual mandate repeal in a tax reform bill disingenuously conflates two distinct policy areas.
Roberts defended the Obamacare individual mandate on the basis that it falls under the broad congressional power to raise taxes “for the general welfare.”