Reply #99: It's not the mandate that's the problem [View All]

[jeanpalmer]

It's the kind of mandate.

Obama is proposing nothing to lower the outrageous cost of healthcare in this country. There are no cost reduction/containment elements to his ideas (he doesn't have a plan). His idea is to maintain the high cost of healthcare but through mandates force everyone to conribute to it. His insurance exchange likely will lower insurance premiums by a very small amount, if at all. It could raise them. But it does nothing to control them in the long run.

Also, his mandate forces people to support an industry that is inefficient, works against the public interest, and is not needed.

Obama's mandate will mandate a payment/tax system that is very regressive, even with subsidies. The burden will fall almost exclusively on middle class and poor.

The kind of mandate that would serve the people is a single payer system coupled with an aggressive cost reduction/containment effort, with payment mandated through income tax payments.