Two new reports clarify what Gov. Romney's Massachusetts tax reform was really about: a tax hike. Although today is the deadline for individuals to enrol in the state's mandatory health care, only 200,000 of an estimated maximum eligible 600,000 have signed up. Those who don't will suffer the loss of a personal income tax exemption of $219.

Why aren't they signing up? Many don't know about it, despite the state spending $600,000 on "outreach".Of the $200,000 who have signed up, 188,000 of them are eligible for free or subsidized care. Only 10,200 belong to those who earn enough to pay the full admission price to the Commonwealth Connector.

Question: If universal health care is so almighty important to everyone, can somebody please explain to me why the supposed "beneficiaries" are so uninterested in enrolling that you can't even get their attention by advertising during Boston Red Sox' games?

The beauty of this (for the state, hospitals, and others dependent on these takings) is that everyone of those who does not sign up is automatically branded a "burden on the health care system" - whether they use it or not. Come next spring, they'll be dinged $219 on their 2007 tax return, which most of them will just shrug off.

KA-CHING! Do the math: if 400,000 don't sign up that's over $87 million of tax revenue for the state to hand out to the special interests who lobbied for "universal" health care.

But it doesn't stop there: small businesses, the target of this reform, are too busy running their businesses to waste time dealing with the bureaucracy - or even learn about it. Only 4% of them are very aware of the new requirement, according to a new poll.

This is great news for the tax-eaters: every business that fails to enroll an employee in a health plan will also be taxed - $295 per head! Of the individuals who have signed up, 5.1 percent are above the income cut-off. Let's assume that they are fully employed and the fully employed also comprise the same proportion of those who have not signed up. That's about 30,600 workers whose employers will be taxed over $9 million for not offering them health plans.

This brings us to about $95 million total. Of course, many people below the income cut-off are also employed, so we can be confident that the actual tax take from the employers will be significantly more than the $9 million. Let's call it an even $100 million.

Nice work if you can get it. Oh, and the price of health care in Massachusetts? Still going up faster than the rest of the nation.