GOOD: CBO Won’t Hide Biden’s Government Takeover of Health Care.

It became a major scandal when Philadelphia-based researcher Rich Weinstein uncovered video of Jonathan Gruber, the architect of Obamacare, saying: “This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure the CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies.”

The quote became famous but was widely misunderstood; he was not referring to the penalty vs. tax question on which Chief Justice John Roberts would later uphold the law. The issue was whether the payment for a mandatory government insurance program should be scored as tax revenue – like Social Security or Medicare premiums – or considered private sector payments. This is crucial because a program scored as taxes and spending is transparently a government takeover, with potentially trillions of dollars shifted from the private sector to government.

There’s bad news for Joe Biden’s current plan. As Biden explained: “I’d bring back the individual mandate… and here’s the deal. We’re in a situation where if you provide an option for anybody who in fact wants to buy into Medicare for All, they can buy in.”

It’s hard to see how a mandate paired with a government plan could be scored by CBO as anything but taxes and spending.

The subterfuge tells you all you need to know about the efficacy of the proposal.