There’s a difference between taxing a transaction and taxing the lack of a transaction (“Upheld,” Page A1, June 29). To call the mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act a tax is just semantics — a tax can always be raised to make inaction prohibitively expensive. In this interpretation of the Constitution, the federal government can, in effect, force citizens to do whatever it wants by “taxing” them for not doing it. So, why stop at health care? All of us are, or likely will be, in the market for food, clothing, housing, long-term care, cars and local transportation, train and airline travel, regular exercise, jobs, dating, finding a long-term mate, having children, taking vacations, and landing a job. Under the reasoning of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., shouldn’t the federal government be allowed to establish insurance exchanges for those goods and services, and tax us all in?