Obama’s Creative New Way of Describing the Obamacare Mandate

From The Blaze.com (May 23):

President Barack Obama told a fundraising crowd in his hometown of Chicago that Obamacare, known mostly for the individual mandate, is simply a free-market tool “to encourage people to buy insurance.”

“Encourage” is an interesting characterization of what both Republicans and Democrats consistently called a “mandate” during the debate over the Affordable Care Act, and during the legal fight that went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2012 that the mandate was constitutional as a tax. The law also contains subsidies for lower income Americans to purchase health insurance, which would be a carrot for some to buy insurance, and a stick for all who didn’t.

Although the health law relies on penalties to get people to buy private insurance plans, the Merriam-Webster definition of “encourage” is “to make (someone) more determined, hopeful, or confident,” “to make (something) more appealing or more likely to happen,” or “to make (someone) more likely to do something : to tell or advise (someone) to do something.” [read more]

Yea, that’s an interesting way to put it. More like doublespeak. For one thing, Obamacare is not the free-market. You do not have the option not to buy health insurance. That’s like saying being fined or going to jail is a way to encourage people to pay their taxes.