Sheldon Richman on the Supreme Court's Dismal ObamaCare Decision

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.