If Americans are mandated to purchase from a government-enabled cartel, is it a tax?

[Faryn Balyncd]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/us/politics/04obama.html




And if middle class Americans are increasingly forced, as a result of this mandate, into non-group plans, which even the CBO says will now experience an ACCELERATION in premium inflation, is this a "middle class tax increase"?







:kick:





"If Barack Obama’s bill gets changed to exclude the public entities, it is not health insurance reform…it rises and falls on whether the public is allowed to choose Medicare if they’re under 65 or not. If they are allowed to choose Medicare as an option, this bill will be real health care reform...."

- Howard Dean

[kenny blankenship]

1. Sort of a cross between a tax and a royal grant of monopoly

But even in the case of Royal Monopolies, I'm not aware of an instance where subjects were forced under penalty of law to buy the product. If you did buy whatever it was that was a granted monopoly- tea, gum arabic, etc.- you had to buy it from one of the king's designated pals like the Lord Guillemot, or the East India Company, so they could profit from their influence with the king. And if you tried to get around that by buying smuggled goods you got into big trouble. But you didn't have to buy tea. In this case, you do have to buy the product from the cartel. Which makes it compulsory like paying a poll tax, except of course the money doesn't go into the public purse to build some essential project at the lowest possible cost, but it instead goes to fatten the profits of a private party.

If you don't want to call it a sovereign grant of monopoly for some reason, then that just leaves the other thing.