In Defending His Health Care Plan, Romney Often Called Its Mandate a Tax WASHINGTON - Four months before Mitt Romney signed his health care plan into law in Massachusetts in 2006, he told a conservative group that the state's tax code would be the hammer that would make the plan work. Charles Dharapak/Associated Press Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, with their grandchildren on Thursday on Lake Winnipesaukee in Wolfeboro, N.H., where the Romneys have a summer home. For those who refused to comply with the state's mandate to buy health insurance, he said in remarks to the Heritage Foundation, "they are going to lose their personal tax exemption." "We will withhold any of their tax refund," he said. As the Massachusetts governor and then as a presidential candidate, Mr. Romney spent the next six years describing in a variety of different ways the possible punishments for ignoring the Massachusetts mandate: as "free-rider surcharges," "tax penalties," "tax incentives" and sometimes just as "penalties." But regardless of the terms he used, his intentions were clear: Massachusetts residents who chose not to buy health insurance would see their state income taxes go up. Now, as he battles President Obama for the White House, Mr. Romney is asking voters to condemn his rival for a health insurance mandate that is nearly identical to the one he championed in Massachusetts. In allying himself after a delay of several days with much of the rest of the Republican Party in labeling Mr. Obama's mandate a tax, Mr. Romney reduced the chances that he would anger conservatives. But in effect he also asked voters to ignore his own record. Both his plan and Mr. Obama's use the threat of higher taxes to motivate people to buy insurance. But Mr. Romney is seeking to draw a sharp distinction between the two, criticizing the president's approach with the same language that he once happily applied to his own achievement. The political implications of Mr. Romney's record on health care intensified last week when the Supreme Court upheld the federal health insurance mandate on the grounds that it could be justified as an exercise of the Congressional power to levy taxes. That decision handed conservatives a fresh opportunity to brand Mr. Obama as a president who raised Americans" taxes. Republican leaders in the House and Senate seized that opportunity with relish until Monday, when Eric Fehrnstrom, a top Romney aide, said that Mr. Romney, the party's presumptive presidential nominee, did not believe Mr. Obama's mandate was a tax. The division between the national Republican leadership and Mr. Romney lasted just a few days. His advisers described the situation as untenable, and decided that the semantics game was not worth playing. It was confusing voters, they said, and it was distracting the campaign from its broader message that Mr. Romney would repeal Mr. Obama's health care plan. As Mr. Romney prepared to march in the Fourth of July parade in Wolfeboro, N.H., where he owns a vacation home, on Wednesday, his aides anticipated that reporters would shout questions at him on the issue. They decided to have Mr. Romney describe the president's mandate as a tax in an interview with CBS News. "The Supreme Court has the final word, and their final word is that "Obamacare" is a tax, so it's a tax," Mr. Romney said in the interview, though he asserted that the court's opinion also supported the contention that his own mandate in Massachusetts was merely a "penalty." The distinction is technically accurate. Without directly referring to Massachusetts, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in the court's majority opinion that a governor could design a health care mandate under the authority that all states enjoy to carry out laws without resorting to a specific taxing authority. Broader "police powers," Chief Justice Roberts wrote, are reserved to the states, which "do not need constitutional authorization to act." Mr. Romney's campaign did not respond to requests for comment. But whatever the legal justification, the law signed by Mr. Romney used the tax system to enforce the mandate, seizing on an idea that had become popular among conservative scholars at the time. In his later book, "No Apology," Mr. Romney said taxes would provide the necessary incentive to persuade people to purchase health insurance. Reporting was contributed by John H. Cushman Jr. and Adam Liptak from Washington, Michael Barbaro from New York and Kitty Bennett from Florida.