Regarding those mandates...

[babylonsister]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/12/the_best_argument.php?ref=fpblg

The Best Argument
Josh Marshall | December 15, 2009, 2:48PM


The best argument I've heard from people who say the emerging bill isn't just insufficient but just bad law is this: If you're going to force people to buy coverage (mandates), you need to provide them an alternative to buying private sector health insurance to prevent them from getting gouged by the insurance companies. In the abstract that makes a lot of sense. And it even makes a decent amount of sense in the non-abstract, real world.

Here's the problem though. The fantasy Public Option would have served this role and put a lot of downward pressure on private sector insurance premiums. And at the beginning of this debate I thought that's what was being discussed. In fact, though, none of the Public Options that had any support in Congress really accomplished this. They were all designed to keep most people from being able to buy in. That's why the scoring from the CBO showed very few people actually buying into it (2 million for the senate bill and 6 for House bill, if memory serves) and relatively little downward pressure on premiums. Why they were so feeble-ized is a good question -- for which I've heard some good and some bad answers.

My point though is that if you are worried about mandates now (and I think that's a very legitimate worry) you should have been worried about them with a Public Option too.

[Cleita]

1. Well you already know how I felt about what was being offered.

However, a public option that allowed anyone who wanted to to buy into Medicare, would have been a decent public option providing the premium for the buy in wasn't inflated to provide "a level playing field" with the insurance companies. A real level playing field would have been forcing the insurance companies to compete with Medicare fair and square, which is why they couldn't go down that road.

[Ruby the Liberal]

2. I'm not worried about mandates. The court will never let this stick.

Think about it - forcing people to purchase a product from a for-profit company that happens to be protected from anti-trust regulations?

The line to file suits against this will tie up every court in the land.

[damntexdem]

3. Kill the bill!

Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill! Kill the bill!