Republicans who loved a health insurance mandate (until Obama did too)
Republicans who once supported a health insurance mandate include: Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Bob Dole, Tim Pawlenty and many others.
Mitt Romney in 2011:
“The idea for a health care plan in Massachusetts was not mine alone. The Heritage Foundation, a great conservative think tank, helped on that. I’m told Newt Gingrich, one of the very first people who came up with the idea of an individual mandate, did that years and years ago. It was seen as a conservative idea to say, you know what? People have a responsibility for caring for themselves if they can. We’ll help people who can’t care for themselves, but if you can care for yourself, you gotta take care of yourself and pay your own bills”
Newt Gingrich in 1993:
"I am for people, individuals — exactly like automobile insurance — individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance.”
Paul Breer, presenting the Heritage Foundation’s plan for a health insurance mandate in 1989:
“Many states now…require anybody driving a car to have liability insurance. But neither the federal government nor any state requires all households to protect themselves from the potentially catastrophic costs of a serious accident or illness. Under the Heritage plan, there would be such a requirement…Mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance.”
LA times, May 28, 2011:
"In 1993, however, more than a third of the Senate GOP caucus, including Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, signed on to a proposal by Sen. John Chafee (D-R.I.) to expand health coverage using an insurance requirement."
"Among the cosponsors were conservative stalwarts Robert Bennett of Utah, Lauch Faircloth of North Carolina and Ted Stevens of Alaska. Other cosponsors of the Chafee bill included Sens. Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, Orrin G. Hatch of Utah and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, all of whom are still in the Senate.
The National Federation of Independent Business, a conservative small-business group, praised the bill "for its emphasis on individual responsibility."