General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What if Bush... [View all]Charlemagne
(576 posts)From a WaPo (I know, I know. But they make a good point here) article
"Take health-care reform. The individual mandate was developed by a group of conservative economists in the early 90s. Mark Pauly, an economist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, was one of them. We were concerned about the specter of single-payer insurance, he told me recently. The conservative Heritage Foundation soon had an individual-mandate plan of its own, and when President Bill Clinton endorsed an employer mandate in his health-care proposal, both major Republican alternatives centered on an individual mandate. By 1995, more than 20 Senate Republicans including Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Dick Lugar and a few others still in office had signed one individual mandate bill or another."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/obama-revealed-a-moderate-republican/2011/04/25/AFPrGfkE_story.html