Individual Health Insurance Mandate Started As A Republican Idea

[harvey007]

Source: Miami Herald

`The truth is this is a Republican idea,'' said Linda Quick, president of the South Florida Hospital and Healthcare Association. She said she first heard the concept of the ``individual mandate'' in a Miami speech in the early 1990s by Sen. John McCain, a conservative Republican from Arizona, to counter the ``Hillarycare'' the Clintons were proposing.
McCain did not embrace the concept during his 2008 election campaign, but other leading Republicans did, including Tommy Thompson, secretary of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush.
Seeking to deradicalize the idea during a symposium in Orlando in September 2008, Thompson said, ``Just like people are required to have car insurance, they could be required to have health insurance.''
Among the other Republicans who had embraced the idea was Mitt Romney, who as governor of Massachusetts crafted a huge reform by requiring almost all citizens to have coverage.
``Some of my libertarian friends balk at what looks like an individual mandate,'' Romney wrote in The Wall Street Journal in 2006. ``But remember, someone has to pay for the health care that must, by law, be provided: Either the individual pays or the taxpayers pay. A free ride on government is not libertarian.''

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/23/1544321/individual-health-insurance-mandate.html

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/23/1544321/individual-health-insurance-mandate.html

---

Plus...most news reports don't mention the fact that people can opt-out of the mandate by claiming a religious reason.

[tabatha]

1. Yep, what Frum said:

David Frum: Health insurance bill builds on ideas developed at the conservative Heritage Foundation

"Could a deal have been reached? Who knows? But we do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney's Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the conservative Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994."

http://www.aei.org/article/101820

The quote comes from a conservative website where Frum is castigating the Republicans for not compromising on the bill since it had so much in common with the way conservatives already think.

Whatever today's bill was, it was not a victory for progressivism...or the financially challenged.

It is absolutely moronic, mendacious for the Republicans to say govt take over of health care, socialism, etc, etc.

They are not concerned about policy; they only want to bash Obama.

[kenny blankenship]

39. -

posted in the wrong spot.

[depakid]

2. So did the tax on health care benefits. McCain ran on it in 2008!

:rofl:

As a candidate, Obama shredded his opponent, John McCain, for proposing just such a tax. McCain's embrace of the idea, in fact, deeply damaged his standing among union households, internal labor polling showed.

Now in the White House, Obama is supporting the tax on insurance plans.

Freshman Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), who has long been critical of the surtax on the wealthy, which he worries could hit small businesses, spoke up in favor of the tax on insurance. His comments about union opposition to the tax struck some on the call as surprising. Big Labor may be opposed to it, he told his colleagues, but the unions support the Senate plan, which must mean that they'll go along with a bill that includes such a tax.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/07/house-dems-debate-cadilla_n_415293.html

[ProSense]

7. Utter ignorance

McCain proposed a tax on everyone:

McCain has proposed new health insurance tax credits, which his campaign estimates to cost $3.6 trillion over the decade. He says he pays for it by taxing workers’ health benefits, which are largely tax-free today. McCain aides say the plan has no net cost and left it out of their budget plan.

McCain’s numbers add up only by raising taxes on middle-class families. To raise $3.6 trillion by taxing health benefits, you need both income and payroll taxes. But that means an $1,100 tax increase on a typical married couple earning $60,000 in 2013.

Alternatively, McCain could avoid tax increases by applying only income taxes – but not payroll taxes – to health benefits. And this is what his spokesman told the Daily Tax Report he does. But income taxes alone fall $1.3 trillion short of paying for his tax credits.

link

[depakid]

10. LOL Taxing benefits was one of McCain's signature health care ideas!

in turn- individuals got a tax credit (a subsidy) to purchase insurance on the "free" market.

Now what does that sound like?

For his part, McCain looks equally nuts in that he's gone apoplectic about the passage of many of the elements that his own plan contained!

:rofl:

Gotta love the Through the Looking Glass nature of the whole deal.

[ProSense]

11. The best thing about today

watching the complainers, who couldn't stop the bill, twisting in the wind.

Well, if it serves to easy the pain of irrelevance, twist away.

[depakid]

12. Democrats painted themselves into an ugly corner and had to pass something

even if it was- as Dean implied "crap legislation' laden with Republican policy ideas at the expense of much more popular and effective Democratic ones!

So you bet, I find all the irony amusing.

Acolytes cheering for proposals that they'd have fought tooth and nail against had the shoe been on the other foot- and Republicans throwing fits about the very sorts or policies they'd have been working hard to pass themselves!

[ProSense]

13. Do the twist.

President Obama signed the "biggest attack on economic inequality" in three decades

[depakid]

15. The Google news headline is classic: That health mandate GOP is suing to stop? It was their idea

On the other matter:

Not sure how the rank & file is going to react come November, but labor wasn't very happy in Massachusetts about adopting the unpopular Republican benefits tax and scrapping the House's far more popular progressive surcharge on the wealthiest Americans, with the most the ability to pay.

Reverse populism!

Go after your own constituencies- while protecting http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn4daYJzyls">Bush's base

[havocmom]

38. So, no real argument against being shown what McCain acutally proposed

and how close it is to what we got.

Yep, that's about right, so go for the personal attack "watching the complainers who couldn't stop the bill..." And ALWAYS leaving out the part that many opposed in favor of an agenda which would have been real reform and real change.

Typical. Tired.

edited for typo

[No Elephants]

25. And here I thought he lost. Aren't elections supposed to have consequences?

[bvar22]

44. Here is the video.

Enjoy!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x420430

[dkf]

3. The world is so screwed up that a democratic President is implementing republican policy.

This is exactly what I've been saying since day one. We have been tricked into making Richard Nixon's dream a reality.

I thought I was electing a Democrat. Sure fooled me.

[scentopine]

6. Republicans got 85% of what they wanted without casting a single

vote for the plan - thank god they weren't more cooperative, Obama would have given them the last 15%. For the middle class nothing changes except kids can ride on your plan which really sucks because democrats and republicans are fucking over the non-rich so badly, kids cannot make it on their own anymore. With tuition inflation, health care inflation, energy inflation its like we are in a third world economy with despots driving inflation through roof as a result of monopolies, corruption and chaos.

[No Elephants]

26. +1

[Oregone]

9. word

[salguine]

16. I think the Democrats have become what used to be the Republicans, and what used to be

the Republicans have slipped free of reality altogether. We have a center-right party and a right-right party.

[laughingliberal]

22. Not a doubt in my mind about it

We have moved to the right of Reagan and the Republicans have just gone off a cliff of crazy.

[No Elephants]

30. If Democrats were not moving right, the country would not be moving right.

[salguine]

36. I don't think the country IS moving right. I think the Party is moving right because

right is what the corporations want. The country? No.

[glitch]

42. No doubt about it. nt

[bvar22]

45. Nailed it.

The original Obama HCR Proposal:

*NO Mandates

*No tax increase on the Working Class

*A Public Option "like Medicare" (Publicly Owned/Government Administered)

*Paid for by tax increase on top 2%
America liked that plan, and voted FOR it.


So what did we get?
The Republican Plan (National RomneyCare repackaged with Obama's face on the label)

LESS than 35% of ALL Americans support Mandates without a Public Option.

So where IS the disconnect?

[Lorien]

46. Or, as Bill Maher said "The Democrats have moved to the Right and the Right

has moved into an insane asylum." How many of Obama's policies are to the Left of Reagan's?

[Leopolds Ghost]

18. What else is new?

Try implementing non-Republican policy and see how long it is before you are "character-assassinated" by a variety of explicit means or worse.

I suspect for Obama, it began with the realization that he'd have to keep Bush's terrible secret about Bin Laden being supposedly alive, but we are no longer interested in finding him, perhaps because he died in 2002. Shades of the movie Watchmen....

[No Elephants]

27. You get character assassinated regardless. So, you do the right thing and stop worrying about

the inevitable character assassination.

IMO, Obama was center right for quite a while. Or, he thinks being center right is in his best interests. Either way, the effect is the same.

In Illinois, he was absent or voted present when controversial things like abortion came up. He ran in the primary as to the left of Hillary, but we should have noticed how prominent people like Daschle were in his campaign camp.

Democrats who are unhappy with center right Democrats and Blue Dogs need to stop focusing on Obama and Nelson, et al. and start figuring out how to stop that kind of Democrat from continuing to follow Republicans further and further right.

[amborin]

48. the more I read, the more evidence that

Obama has been touting conservative ideas for some time

no accident he touted Reagan's grand views

[Dappleganger]

4. They had a chance to scribble their names all over it...

but lost it when they decided to act like petulant children.

[ProSense]

5. And look who has embraced it:

"If I were in Congress," he said, "I’d probably hold my nose and vote for it, because the alternative of not passing it is worse, bad as this bill is. Unfortunately, that’s the reality."

"If it fails, it wouldn’t put even limited constraints on insurance companies," he explained, noting that the bill takes "at least has some steps towards barring the withholding of policies from people with prior disabilities." The consumer protections from dodgy insurance practices are among the bill's most popular components.

The mandate to purchase insurance has been a central qualm of progressives and conservatives opposed to the effort. Chomsky, while admitting it’s a boon to insurance companies, called it a "step toward universality," asserting that "without some kind of mandatory coverage, nothing is going to work at all."

link

Yeah, Republicans want to take credit for everything, even things that have long been part of any universal health care system.

[Leopolds Ghost]

19. Wow, Chomsky is such a fucking hypocrite. A guy for years claiming to be a left libertarian

I have not listened to him for years.

[laughingliberal]

23. Nor do I need to listen to him or anyone else to see what is right in front of my eyes

Saves a lot of pretzeling if I don't hitch my wagon to a particular individual. For instance, if I was against mandates when Hillary ran on them, I find I'm still against them when the candidate I supported flips. Disappointed in my choice of candidates, yes. But not having to twist myself up to justify a policy I once disagreed with.

[No Elephants]

33. He said the bill is bad.

[No Elephants]

32. Chomsky said the bill is bad, so he's not that much of a hypocrite.

[No Elephants]

31. What Chomsky said in that quote is far from an embrace.

[Oregone]

8. Nixon had mandated & subsidized private insurance in his early 70s reform

A real party of liberals fought that shit off then. Now that party passes old rejected Republican ideas into law

[laughingliberal]

24. Not only that, Nixon had an employer mandate

So, a party of Democrats passes a more conservative bill than Nixon favored.

[No Elephants]

34. Nixon proposed an employer mandate, not an individual mandate.

[grahamhgreen]

14. Kill the mandate!

[one-eyed fat man]

51. A law mandated private purchase in 1792

I would like to point out with regard to statements that the current health care bill is the first to require citizens to purchase something, the 1792 Militia Act required every male of military age to have a musket and ammunition, which was roughly equivalent. So indeed it is not unprecedented, although I would a dollar to a donut most of its backers would not want to invoke requirement that every male of military age prove they had at least one gun!

[Leopolds Ghost]

17. But now it is a DEMOCRATIC idea. This is the 21st century people!

:sarcasm:

[laughingliberal]

20. Yes. Joan Walsh was defending against a Republican today who called it a government takeover and

said it was a policy being advocated for a few years ago by the Heritage foundation. Mind you, she was not saying that as an attack but as a statement of fact to prove to the Republican talker that it's not a socialist program.

[Hannah Bell]

28. but that was the old, socialist heritage foundation. not the new, fascist, fundie one.

[New Dawn]

21. Kick for truth.

[No Elephants]

35. And you're convinced it's truth because?

[No Elephants]

29. Um, individual mandates were part of Hillarycare, also in the early '90s.

Besides, since when does Linda Quick's recollection of when she first heard about mandates = historical fact?

McCain has taken at least two sides on every issue. But he never introduced legislation with an individual mandate. Democrats did that, under Clinton and under Obama.

Besides, regardless of who yapped about it first in the early '90's, Democrats made it the law of the land.

[Individualist]

37. K&R

[kenny blankenship]

40. It still is Republican. We're ALL Republicans now.

thanks to this "landmark". This is a landmark like NAFTA was a landmark.
Gee, it looks like Republican crap, and it smells like Republican crap, but since it's pushed on us by a Democrat it MUST be good for us. The ghosts of millions of good unionized American manufacturing jobs are screaming out to us, NO, DON'T SWALLOW THAT!

[bornskeptic]

41. No it wasn't "originally" a Republican idea.

Germany, the first country with universal healthcare, has had an individual health insurance mandate for 130 years.

[glitch]

43. The also have regulated, non-profit health industry. Our version truly is uniquely American,

and originally Nixon's.

[amborin]

47. K&R

[cbdo2007]

49. Can someone try to help me understand the Boehner 1999 Health Bill??

Here is the link:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:H.R.2926:

Looks like he isn't calling for a "mandate" but rather is giving a 100% tax refund to people who DO have insurance. Sounds like the same thing to me - $$$ benefit for people with insurance, no $$$ for those without.

I'm pretty sure we can nail quite a few repubes on this since they all seemed to be for it prior to 2008.

[TomCADem]

50. Freeing African American Slaves Was Also A Republican Idea

...that the Democrats opposed. However, I am more than happy to say that the Democrats were wrong, and the Republicans were right.