Health Insurance Mandate Includes 'Tax' Despite Obama Denial
- Fox News
- Sep 22, 2009
A proposed requirement that all Americans buy health insurance does in fact include a "tax" increase, according to the Senate -- even though President Obama insisted Sunday that it "absolutely" does not.
Obama gave ABC News' George Stephanopoulos a stern talking-to Sunday for suggesting that the mandate to buy health insurance would amount to a tax. He even taunted the host for citing the dictionary definition of "tax" to make his point.
"The fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now," Obama said.
But the language of the health care reform plan proposed by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., explicitly labels the penalty attached to the mandate as an "excise tax."
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