Presidential candidate Obama speaks out against a private health insurance policy mandate.

[Better Believe It]

Can We Have Health Reform Without an Individual Mandate? Yes, It's Called 'Medicare for All'
by John Nichols
August 13, 2011

Those of us who favor fundamental healthcare reform have always been uncomfortable with the individual mandate. So was candidate Barack Obama, who distinguished himself from Hillary Clinton (a mandate backer) by saying in a February 2008, interview: “Both of us want to provide health care to all Americans. There’s a slight difference, and her plan is a good one. But, she mandates that everybody buy health care. She’d have the government force every individual to buy insurance and I don’t have such a mandate because I don’t think the problem is that people don’t want health insurance, it’s that they can’t afford it. So, I focus more on lowering costs. This is a modest difference. But, it’s one that she’s tried to elevate, arguing that because I don’t force people to buy health care that I’m not insuring everybody. Well, if things were that easy, I could mandate everybody to buy a house, and that would solve the problem of homelessness. It doesn’t.”

The individual mandate was always a bad idea. Instead of recognizing that healthcare is a right, the members of Congress and the Obama administration who cobbled together the healthcare reform plan created a mandate that maintains the abuses and the expenses of for-profit insurance companies—and actually rewards those insurance companies with a guarantee of federal money.

As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich notes: "[No] federal judge has struck down Social Security or Medicare as being an unconstitutional requirement that Americans buy something. Social Security and Medicare aren’t broccoli or asparagus. They’re as American as hot dogs and apple pie.”

“So if the individual mandate to buy private health insurance gets struck down by the Supreme Court or killed off by Congress, “ says Reich, “I’d recommend President Obama immediately propose what he should have proposed in the beginning — universal health care based on Medicare for all, financed by payroll taxes.”

Americans don’t need mandates. They need healthcare.

Read the full article at:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/162765/can-we-have-health-reform-without-individual-mandate-yes-its-called-medicare-all

[spanone]

1. alert the media...a politician changes his mind on policy....wow!!!

[arthritisR_US]

6. If you could get the houses to support him

he would do it! IMO.

[msongs]

12. gee when bush "changed his mind" he was roundly reviled right here on DU nt

[FarLeftFist]

14. So?

[girl gone mad]

23. We shouldn't have two standards.

[Whisp]

34. George Bush was a lieing murdering dry drunk

and killer of 10s of thousands.
I believe that lieing for him was easy, and expected - that was his way.

I also believe that someone Can change their mind and not be compared to that sack of shit Bush. There are no two standards working here, not even near. Stubborn Bush wouldn't admit to ever making mistakes, would he? Do you consider that an admirable trait?

[Proud Liberal Dem]

43. Plus

he and his minions pretended that he never lied, never changed his mind (flip-flopped) and they also lied endlessly that Kerry was an unreliable flip-flopper who couldn't be trusted to protect the American people from terrorism and that they would hit us again the second he was inaugurated.

Politicians make lots of promises or say that they're going to do things their way when they are running but once elected are often confronted with circumstances that make following through on everything more difficult and sometimes doing things differently is part of what needs to happen. I don't believe that any politician is able to follow through on absolutely everything and in the same exact way as they say they will and may need to adjust but Bush was just a liar, particularly in the way that he constantly talked one way but acted completely different in the background.

[mmonk]

2. That was when he was for a public option before he was against it.

[Honeycombe8]

17. A public option was never part of his healthcare plan, even when he was a candidate.

He discussed it a few times as a possibility, maybe a desirability of an end result. But when he came up with a plan, it was nearly identical to Hillary Clinton's, except for the mandate.

[mmonk]

25. .

[girl gone mad]

28. Not quite.

Ezra Klein: Yes, Obama did campaign on the public option:

...speaking as someone who did a lot of reporting on their health-care plan, they emphasized it privately quite a bit. It was, in fact, their answer to a lot of the other flaws in their proposal. So whether Obama used it in his speeches, his campaign purposefully pushed it to, at the least, some reporters, which is to say they worked to ensure that people knew about the public option's important role in their health-care thinking.

Obama's latest statement on this is hair-splitting at best and misleading at worst. That's even more true given how often he mentioned the public option after he got elected. And it's a good example of why the left is losing its trust in Obama. Obama could have given an interview where he expressed frustration that the math of the Senate forced his administration to give up the public option but nevertheless argued that the rest of the health-care bill was well worth passing. Instead, he's arguing that he never cared about the public option anyway, which is just confirming liberal suspicions that they lost that battle because the president was never really on their side.

FLASHBACK: Obama Repeatedly Touted Public Option Before Refusing To Push For It In The Final Hours:

– In the 2008 Obama-Biden health care plan on the campaign’s website, candidate Obama promised that “any American will have the opportunity to enroll in [a] new public plan.” [2008]

– During a speech at the American Medical Association, President Obama told thousands of doctors that one of the plans included in the new health insurance exchanges “needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market.” [6/15/09]

– While speaking to the nation during his weekly address, the President said that “any plan” he signs “must include…a public option.” [7/17/09]


Despite all this overt advocacy for the public option, it appears that Obama was reticent to apply the political pressure necessary to get the plan in the final hours of congressional negotiation. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) — who threatened to filibuster the creation of any new public plan or expansion of Medicare — told the Huffington Post that he “didn’t really have direct input from the White House” on the public option and was never specifically asked to support it.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), one of the most ardent backers of public insurance, blamed the demise of the public option on a “lack of support from the administration.” Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) — perhaps the most visible defender of the public option in the entire health care debate — went even further, saying that Obama’s lack of support for congressional progressives amounted to him being “half-pregnant” with the health insurance and drug industries.

[SmellyFeet]

49. You should be embarrassed for writing that post.

Wow!

http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/president-obama-strongly-supports-publi

President Obama: I think one of the options should be a public insurance option. (Loud cheers) Let me clear. It would only be an option, nobody would be forced to choose it. No one with insurance affected by it. But what it would do is provide more choice and more competition. It would keep pressure on private insurers to keep the policies affordable, to treat their customers better. I mean think about it. It's the same way the public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students. That doesn't inhibit private colleges and universities from thriving out there. The same should be true on the health care front. Minnesota I have said I'm open to different ideas on how to set this up we're going to set this up but I'm not going to back down on the basic principle that if Americans can't find affordable coverage we're going to provide you a choice.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=8343772#.T3SeDTEgeA8

"Any plan I sign must include an insurance exchange…including a public option to increase competition and keep insurance companies honest," Obama said on June 23.

[mike_c]

3. medicare for all!

Let the health insurance industry wither and die. Hell, MAKE the health insurance industry wither and die.

[shrdlu]

7. Parasites be gone!

Medicare for all sounds pretty good to me. I have no original information but I am prepared to believe reports that for-profit insurance eats twenty to thirty percent of medical expenditures with no benefit to patients.

[Sparkly]

4. Hillary Clinton's plan wasn't about buying private insurance

unless that's what you wanted. She included a public plan similar to Medicare.

[Better Believe It]

5. So Obama misrepresented her position? So did Obama also misrepresent his position on the mandate?

Just wondering what to believe.

[Sparkly]

13. As I recall, this was the ONE policy difference between the three of them --

Clinton, Edwards and Obama.

Clinton and Edwards had a "government plan" but to make it work, it required a mandate for those who could afford it. Obama argued against the mandate, so there was always a question about how his plan for a "public option" would be affordable without it. How on earth we ended up with the mandate, but not the "public option," is beyond me.

You'd think the Republicans would love this.

[Raine]

16. Yes and that was the one big reason I prefered Obama over Hillary

which irritates the heck out of me now.

[Bluenorthwest]

44. And that feinged policy was how he got my support in spite of his anti gay rallies with

McClurkin. He was not an honest candidate. Here in Oregon he made a huge deal out of her support for mandates, and his own opposition to them.

[Honeycombe8]

27. As I recall, her plan & Obama's were almost identical, except for the mandate. nt

[Poll_Blind]

8. I still strongly support Candidate Obama and wish he'd won in 2008. nt

PB

[ProSense]

9. First

She’d have the government force every individual to buy insurance and I don’t have such a mandate because I don’t think the problem is that people don’t want health insurance, it’s that they can’t afford it. So, I focus more on lowering costs. This is a modest difference.

...that's correct. Remember there was the issue with Clinton wanting to garnish wages. Obama stressed lowering cost. In fact, he indicated that he would be open to the mandate after affordability was addressed. The issue of affordability and universality is addressed with the plan's structure and mandate exemptions.

Second, Reich actually indicated that Medicare is mandated:

<...>

Unhappily for Obama and the Democrats, most Americans don’t seem to like the individual mandate very much anyway. Many on the political right believe it a threat to individual liberty. Many on the left object to being required to buy something from a private company.

The President and the Democrats could have avoided this dilemma in the first place if they’d insisted on Medicare for all, or at least a public option.

After all, Social Security and Medicare require every working American to “buy” them. The purchase happens automatically in the form of a deduction from everyone’s paychecks. But because Social Security and Medicare are government programs financed by payroll taxes they don’t feel like mandatory purchases.

Americans don’t mind mandates in the form of payroll taxes for Social Security or Medicare. In fact, both programs are so popular even conservative Republicans were heard to shout “don’t take away my Medicare!” at rallies opposed to the new health care law.

http://robertreich.org/post/19972321637

[TheKentuckian]

19. Taxes are not mandates dictating how we spend post tax dollars in open markets

The inability to pass taxes for government spending doesn't mean you can rob wallets and pocketbooks and make everyone buy concrete for projects.

Reich is correct, Americans are fine with paying dedicated taxes for programs like Social Security and Medicare. That is the way we do things, we don't order everyone to get with Smith Barney or the insurance cartel out of pocket.
That is why we have taxes.

[kenny blankenship]

10. He was right then

And he was still right then now.

[Bluenorthwest]

45. Well said...

nt

[FarLeftFist]

11. Pres.Obama didn't write the HC bill.

[Better Believe It]

15. It was written by the health insurance industry, big pharma and Senators at Obama's home I believe.

It was a backroom deal with Wall Street interests as I recall.

[kenny blankenship]

18. That's correct he didn't write it, but it does bear his signature

Don't sign crappy unConstitutional legislation, I guess, is the takeaway...

Of course in reality what a President indicates they are willing to sign and what they are unwilling to sign has a major influence on a piece of legislation as it takes shape. If he objected to his name being associated forever with a steaming pile of dysfunctional special interest boondoggles, he should have let Democratic leadership on the Hill know about it before the pile was deposited.

[FarLeftFist]

40. He's not objected to it. And you should take your head out of your arse. The HC bill is a BIG DEAL.

[Honeycombe8]

29. Wall Street in an investment/financial industry, not health care. nt

[Better Believe It]

36. So the bib insurance companies and big pharma are not listed on Wall Street?

And here I thought they were.

Thanks for the info!

[TheKentuckian]

21. Good luck with that tact. The man called it "his bill" many times on national TV.

It is clear he had tremendous influence and played broker and was who people went to.

[FarLeftFist]

39. Yup. And he stands by it. Doesn't mean he wrote it. We stand by the Constitution also.

Doesn't mean we wrote that either. Or signed it.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

20. I'm totally loving the "Trashing Thread" option especially reserved for the ODSers hellbent on

destroying this president. Off to the can this thread goes...

[FSogol]

24. +1 n/t

[girl gone mad]

31. He did it to himself.

I love how the left still gets the blame, even now. We're just crazy "ODSers" (whatever the heck that is) and "firebaggers" out to get the President.. all because we warned of this exact outcome from the very beginning. If only the bubble people had listened to us then rather than lashing out so bitterly.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

32. No one's blaming the left. I'm a member of the left. I look to those who demonize a president who

has attempted to do what's right. I'm not saying that I agree with everything that he's done, but this particular poster does nothing but start anti-Obama threads. That's why I use the trash can. I trash threads that provide critical assessments of the president. This particular poster is notorious for it. That's why I did it.

[FarLeftFist]

41. You're out of your mind.

[Kablooie]

22. But that would eliminate the insurance companies and SCOTUS would never accept that.

The primary concern and probably deciding factor for the final decision of the conservative judges was how to keep healthy profits for the insurance companies.
That trumped everything else. Citizen health and even the constitution was not nearly as important to them.

[Bonobo]

26. It was a Republican idea for a good reason.

Because it is stupid.

The thing that makes me ill is that people here act like the Repubs are a joke because they are now against it because Obama is FOR it. But the majority of Dems are acting the same way. They are now FOR it because Obama is and because the Repubs are AGAINST it.

Absolutely Zero ability to have an internal yardstick for measuring ideas and simply being swayed but he political crosswinds.

Damned sad.

[Poll_Blind]

30. You're being too hard on them as I'm pretty sure the heart of your solution would require them to...

...read, inform themselves, comparatively analyze information, etc.

I mean, isn't it easier just to croak out a chorus of uninformed approval?

There are so many people on here fighting for the individual mandate who don't even realize it was not only not Obama's idea, it was a demand of Karen Ignagni from the American Health Insurance Plans.



They have no idea. No clue what they're rooting for in ignorance.

PB

[Bonobo]

33. Sadly, PB, it doesn't EVEN require that.

You don't actually need to analyze information on this one. You just need to think and be honest with yourself.

And Obama (candidate Obama that is) said it very well when he said that mandating the purchase of a house would not end homelessness.

Clearly this was a bone thrown to insurance companies to assuage the sting of having to (gasp) insure patients with pre-existing conditions (eventually, that is). But it did nothing to remove the really expense-adding burden on the country's medical system (for-profit health care) and so was nothing more than a band-aid and some makeup.

Does "Obama-care" make things better for a lot of people? Yes.

Does it virtually guarantee that we will not have an actual "public option" in the next 20 years? Yes. How? Because, as in all things Obama, he has RESET the right-left tug-of-war to the RIGHT by STARTING with what could have been the eventual compromise (THE PUBLIC OPTION WAS THE COMPROMISE!) and winding up with a "negotiated" republican position.

And NOW, that Republican position that Obama took is being called the "Left Wing" position and so the entire ball field has been shifted hugely to the right as a result.

This, more than anything, has been the defining legacy of the Obama/Clinton behavior. A steady shift to the right being allowed because they do not properly advocate for the actual positions of the left.

And now, on DU even, people have no fucking idea what a Democrat even IS anymore.

[girl gone mad]

35. I had to turn off Rachel Maddow for that reason.

She did a lengthy segment about the unbelievable hypocrisy of the Republicans for being against a plan that originated at the Heritage Foundation. Yet, as you point out, Democrats were against this at the time and - whadyaknow - called it unconstitutional.

This country is just sad. Our right wing is completely wacked out of its mind and our left wing wastes its historic political gains passing a plan someone found in the dumpster behind a quasi-libertarian think tank back in the 90s.

[thesquanderer]

37. This kind of explains how Obama "came around" to the mandate

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/business/jonathan-gruber-health-cares-mr-mandate.html

[thesquanderer]

38. Regardless of whether or not the mandate was a good idea...

...it was probably the only way he could have gotten in passed anyway.

I almost wonder if Obama is kind of hoping the mandate gets struck down, as long as it is done in such a way that 90% of the rest stands, because the mandate was the part he liked least anyway.

If the mandate is struck down, it would be nice if some day some Democrat (sadly, probably not Obama) says, "Okay, we tried it your way, with the mandate that was a Republican idea form the start. That didn't work. So now let's try it my way..." and create a single payer system everyone is permitted to buy into.

[SATIRical]

42. " this can be solved, but it’s important for him to give me space,”

“After my election, I have more flexibility.”

[grantcart]

46. More nonsense from someone who thinks that you can pass massive governmental legislation with

51 votes in the Senate.

[librechik]

47. yes, then he discovered Congress was in charge of it.

and had their own irrational agenda. That he was ultimately powerless to influence. Surprise.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

48. Lukewarm support for Obama now is going to get us Romney

for the next four years. Bringing this case before the SCOTUS opens
all the old wounds, how convenient for the repukes to watch us skirm.

I don't believe Obama ever really wanted the mandate, but I remember the
ugliness that surrounded the attempt to craft the healthcare reform plan. It
consumed the media and Obama paid later being accused of neglecting the
economic crisis because that was what the media projected when in reality
he was juggling crisis after crisis. Thank you GW Bush.

Obama is a constitutional scholar.Are we to believe he never strongly suspected
this would find it's way to the SCOTUS? During this period and shortly after he
made two successful appointments to the SCOTUS, hopefully to shore up support
when the inevitable happened.

This is Obama's legacy and I remember him saying if he had to be a one term president
to make this happen so be it.

Obama does need to proposes universal healthcare based on medicare for all.
Then he can fall on his sword for he has done everything he possibly could given
the restraints we can only imagine he had to deal with.