Amid all of Chief Justice John Roberts’s
scholastic hairsplitting over whether ObamaCare imposes a tax or a
penalty for failing to buy medical insurance, writes Sheldon
Richman, one passage should matter most to advocates of liberty:
“Those subject to the individual mandate may lawfully forgo health
insurance and pay higher taxes, or buy health insurance and pay
lower taxes. The only thing they may not lawfully do is not buy
health insurance and not pay the resulting tax.”

We thus are “free” either to become customers of a
government-licensed insurance company or to pay a special tax,
Richman writes. But we are not free to opt out of this artificially
constructed “choice” entirely.