I thought they passed it specifically as NOT a tax because to do that they would have lacked the votes to pass it, so they called it something else?
That’s right. A new tax to fund 0-care would have not passed. During the New Deal, the Marxists also tried to hide the fact that SS was a tax, but the fact is that they did set it up as a tax as is evident by looking at your paycheck. Same thing with Medicare in the 60s. It should also be pointed that because SS is a tax, any promised ‘benefits’ are solely dependent on whatever the government decides it wants to give to the beneficiaries.