Well, I don’t know how he can say that Congress doesn’t have the power to force people to buy health insurance, but it does have the power to enact a tax that will be imposed on people who refuse to do so. He is in essence saying Congress can do indirectly what it doesn’t have the power to do directly. Very bad precedent.
What he is saying is that the government can't force people legally to buy health insurance, but it can coerce them financially to do so. To me, a distinction without a difference. But, then, I haven't be trained in the art of muddled thinking like our brilliant jurists have.
As if our objections were to the mere word “mandate”...but hey, call it some other word and we are okay being forced to do it. Sort of like, “Don’t kill me”...but if you just want to take away my life, that’s fine.