Romney camp in U-turn on healthcare fee Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for US president, has called a fee at the heart of the US healthcare debate a tax, contradicting what had seemed to be his own campaign's line on the issue. During an interview broadcast on CBS on Wednesday, Mr Romney tried to stake out his position after several days of keeping quiet on the question of what to call the individual mandate that is central to the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama's signature healthcare reform. The law was declared constitutional by the Supreme Court last week. Mr Romney said his position on the insurance mandate had been "taken over by the fact that the majority of the [Supreme] Court said it's a tax and therefore it is a tax." He added: "They have spoken. There's no way around that. You could try and say you wish they had decided a different way, but they didn't. They concluded it was a tax, that's what it is and the America people know that President Obama has broken the pledge he made. He said he wouldn't raise taxes on middle-income Americans. The Supreme Court justices ruled in a 5-4 decision that the individual mandate in the healthcare law, which forces all Americans to buy insurance, was constitutional because the fee it imposed on those not buying insurance was a tax. The White House prefers to call the fee a "penalty" - a definition echoed only a few days ago by Eric Fehrnstrom, one of Mr Romney's top advisers. On Monday Mr Fehrnstrom caused a stir among his party's strategists and congressmen when he said the campaign viewed the fee as a penalty, undercutting a popular line of attack against the president. His comments this week drew quick rebuke from Republicans, who argue that the Supreme Court's ruling contradicted Mr Obama's pledge to not raise taxes on middle-class Americans. Mr Romney's latest intervention underscores his difficulty with the issue: as governor of the state of Massachusetts, in 2006 he helped to enact a healthcare law similar to Mr Obama's. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee maintains the fee at the heart of his law was a penalty - although he has said before it also operated as a tax. The confusion will add to accusations that Mr Romney is trying to have it both ways as he is unsure how much to criticise the president for a policy that bears a marked similarity to his own. Mr Romney's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.