Ira Stoll on Why ObamaCare Is, in Fact, the Largest Tax Increase in History
No sooner had Chief Justice Roberts issued his ruling that ObamaCare's individual mandate to purchase health insurance ObamaCare was a tax than the law's defenders in the press were racing to rebut the idea that the law, overall, is the largest tax increase in American history. From Kevin Drum to Ezra Klein, from Bloomberg Businessweek to The New Republic, journalists claimed ObamaCare wasn't that big of a tax increase at all.
Critics would call this herd journalism, or pack journalism, or groupthink. Defenders would say it is just giving credit where credit is due, and that it happens routinely among right-leaning journalists as well as among left-leaning ones. The important thing for a reader to remember, writes Ira Stoll, is just because a headline or an idea is repeated over and over again doesn't make it true.
