The Individual Mandate: Republicans Were For It Before They Were Against It
What do John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Tommy Thompson have in common? Well, they’re all conservative Republicans. What else?
They all supported requiring Americans to have health insurance — before Democrats made that mandate part of their health insurance reform package, of course:
The lawsuit against the health care overhaul filed Tuesday by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum is focused on a provision that has long been advocated by conservatives, big business and the insurance industry.
The lawsuit by McCollum, a candidate for governor, and 12 other attorneys general, focuses on the provision that virtually all Americans will need to have health insurance by 2014 or face penalties.
The lawsuit calls this an “unprecedented encroachment on the liberty of individuals.” It states the Constitution doesn’t authorize such a mandate, the proposed tax penalty is unlawful and is an “unprecedented encroachment on the sovereignty of the states.”
“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.”
Romney was referring to the federal law that requires everyone to be treated in emergency rooms, regardless of their ability to pay.
26 Responses to “The Individual Mandate: Republicans Were For It Before They Were Against It”
There you go spewing more FACTS again Kathy… You're not playing fair.
Imagine the effect on HCR discussions over the last year if Thompson, Romney and McCain had jumped out front and forced the republican party to engage responsible and reasonable debate. These are politicans who would be our president.
A measure of how far they have gone. They don't even like their own policies.
Republicans were for it before they were against it.
Yes, Kathy, that's quite a paradox you've discovered. But I think I've figured out the answer: there's more than one Republican.
Dr., more than one Republican what? More than one Republican party? More than one Republican position? More than one Republican faction?
Most of us would like to believe the Republican party isn't a monolithic extremist block of nay sayers. Romney, McCain and Thompson should have been leading the parade of the other Republican ______ we haven't heard in the HCR debate.
Hmm Wasn't Candidate Obama against this before he was for it?
He attacked Hilliary Clinton on the issue I believe.
Via Polifact:
Obama flip-flops on requiring people to buy health care
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/stateme…
More:
The guy who was elected was against individual mandates, seems he drowned in the Swamp.
BTW as Kathy writes:
Do we have any actual evidence that he supported it as Kathy claims aside from Linda Quick's assertion? I don't recall seeing anything on this, but maybe he did. Anyone got some news coverage of it, a video clip, or a statement by McCain, or is this merely one persons assertion of something she remembers correctly or incorrectly from the 90s?
And more from the Huffington post
After Ripping Clinton And McCain, Obama Embraces Their Policies
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/22/after-…
And that would actually make sense, Dr J, if the Republicans who supported the individual mandate before still supported the individual mandate. But alas, that's not the case. John McCain, for example — a strong supporter of the individual mandate before, now bitterly opposes it and is one of the most vitriolic voices calling for repeal of the whole bill because he says the individual mandate is unconstitutional. Mitt Romney, too, has been calling for repeal and citing the individual mandate as the reason.
Leonidas,
Have you ever, in your entire life, heard of Google? Do they have Google in Texas? Or not?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=McCain+%22…
So what's your beef, Kathy? You've got the law passed; it's either constitutional or it isn't, no matter what various Republicans think. Why kick the losers?
You made the assertion Kathy, I'm just asking you to back it up with more than one woman's as of yet undocumented recollection from the 90s. Its not my job to back up your assertion when its challenged.
Do they Have Google in New York City?
P.S. I'm not from Texas
BTW Kathy, in an unrelated topic but something I think you might be interested in I give you Bart Stupak's apparant victory. Just posting it here so you will see it:
Obama issues low-key order on abortions
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALe…
I was apparently wrong about Stupak selling his vote for the airports, he gave his vote for a ban on federal funds for abortion it seems.
Now back to the topic at hand.
Very true. Personally, I think he knew at the time that his plan wouldn't work and that Clinton had cornered the market on the correct HCR. He was politically smart and took a more libertarian view, which probably won him just enough votes from the center Dems to beat Clinton.
They both admitted that policy wise they were about the same…except on mandatory health care insurance.
I am fascinated at how successful the GOP has been in garnering support for doing NOTHING about the health care crisis. They have developed fear-mongering into a fine art and manipulate their followers thru talk radio and the rest of the right wing media.
BTW, I thought personal responsibility was a Republican principle— isn't mandated health insurance a means of taking personal responsibility for your own welfare? I notice that no one suggests that automobile drivers forgo the mandate to purchase insurance.
While we still don't and won't learn all the details until later, and there are obviously some differences — such as including the federal takeover of student loans in the legislation, which never should have been even contemplated — what we're learning of the legislation, as I wrote earlier, is that it resembles the current arrangement in Massachusetts, of Mitt Romney (R) and Scott Brown (R) fame, or what the Old Guard Republicans in Washington, DC under Bob Dole proposed as an alternative to ClintonCare.
I'm not sure how a mandate to buy car insurance is the same thing as a mandate to buy health insurance. In the first instance, all drivers who own a vehicle must do so. In the second case, all Americans must do so. Those who don't want to drive can walk, ride a bike, take a bus or – of you're lucky enough to live in Boston – take the “T.” The health insurance mandate appears to be much more sweeping, though I'm interested to see how they'll enforce it. Will it be through employers? What if I'm unemployed? What if I'm an illegal alien. More information, please.
Of course a number of Democrats were against a mandate before they were for it. Don't expect another cheap GOP-bashing thread to note something like that.
The real issue with the mandate, anyway, is that full “participation” (let's keep it euphemistic) is needed in theory to include the most people and the young, healthy people in what amounts to a nation-wide pool of “insured,” in order to reduce the per capita costs.
BTW, I thought personal responsibility was a Republican principle— isn't mandated health insurance a means of taking personal responsibility for your own welfare?
Someone who willingly buys health insurance is exhibiting personal responsibility, someone who has bought insurance because he is forced to is not.
Hence…the mandate…to penalize for a lack of personal responsibility. If there's so much issue with the mandate, then I suggest that all those who refuse to buy health insurance but can afford it should then be mandated to completely self-insure in some type of health savings account (not tied to the stock market so no interest/rate of return earned) and not receive 1 single dime of government assistance. A cool $1,000,000+ to open it should hopefully be sufficient for starters since you just never know when something could happen and they will have to contribute enough to it for all of their medical costs. If they can refuse to buy insurance then I should be able to refuse to give them any of my tax money.
Anna, it seems that would be replacing one mandate with another. I don't necessarily disagree with the individual mandate, although I'm not sure it's constitutional to require citizens to purchase a private product.
I realize it's still a mandate, but the playing field on health care costs has to be leveled somehow. If not some type of mandate, then what?
Dr J, I don't think it's “kicking the losers” to respond when Republican politicians who have spent an entire year obstructing health care reform on totally false and disingenuous grounds — one of which is that it's unconstitutional — call for repealing a bill on those same false and disingenuous grounds. If Republicans who themselves supported the individual mandate for years — before Obama even thought of running for the presidency — are now going to turn around and claim the individual mandate as grounds for a constitutional challenge to the health care reform bill, then I'm going to call them on it.
I have no wish or intention to “kick the losers.”
Just checking in to see if Kathy had actually found any McCain quote to back her assertion yet. Apparently not.
Better work that fancy-smancy google thing of yours Kathy.
How about we kick the all the politicians. They are mostly, all, full of it and they all flip-flop.
Ask TK, he was against Nixon's proposal before he was for it.
Just back to check again. Bueller? Bueller? Kattenberg?