If they can mandate you directly pay a private for profit "health" insurance corporation
for your coverage, they can mandate you directly pay what would be your social security dollars to a private for profit broker on Wall Street.
If they can't, why can't they?
...happening for children's health care.
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SEN. OBAMA...According to Senator Clinton...there are more people covered under her plan than mine is because of a mandate. That is not a mandate for the government to provide coverage to everybody; it is a mandate that every individual purchase health care...If it was not affordable, she would still presumably force them to have it, unless there is a hardship exemption as they've done in Massachusetts, which leaves 20 percent of the uninsured out. And if that's the case, then, in fact, her claim that she covers everybody is not accurate....
MR. WILLIAMS: And Senator Clinton, on this subject --
SEN. CLINTON...
Senator Obama has a mandate in his plan. It's a mandate on parents to provide health insurance for their children. That's about 150 million people who would be required to do that. The difference between Senator Obama and myself is that I know, from the work I've done on health care for many years, that if everyone's not in the system we will continue to let the insurance companies do what's called cherry picking -- pick those who get insurance and leave others out.
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SEN. OBAMA...
I do provide a mandate for children, because, number one, we have created a number of programs in which we can have greater assurance that those children will be covered at an affordable price. On the -- on the point of many adults, we don't want to put in a situation in which, on the front end, we are mandating them, we are forcing them to purchase insurance, and if the subsidies are inadequate, the burden is on them, and they will be penalized. And that is what Senator Clinton's plan does.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/us/politics/26text-debate.html?pagewanted=printAlso, I doubt Republicans can get away with dismantling or killing Social Security. Remember, Bush tried to sell privatization.
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