FOR IT BEFORE THEY WAS AGIN IT, AND VICE VERSA:

How Democrats Learned to Love the Health Insurance Mandate (Merrill Matthews, 2/01/11, Forbes)

For example, Rep. Jim McCrery (R-LA) pulled me aside in 1993 to explain his idea for mandating everyone to have high deductible health insurance, along with a Health Savings Account. McCrery went on to be chairman of the House Ways and Means’ Health Insurance Subcommittee; and though he is now retired, I don’t think he ever abandoned his support for a mandate.

A mandate was also part of the Heritage Foundation’s earlier health care reform proposals. And though Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney initially opposed the coverage mandate in the state’s 2006 prequel to ObamaCare, Democrats demanded it and he now defends it.

However, in the summer of 2009 the country erupted in anger over the coverage mandate in the House Democrats’ plan. Democrats dismissed those spontaneous protests in the streets and at town halls, but Republicans knew better and immediately began to criticize the proposal.

Now Democrats defend the mandate at every opportunity. The Obama justice department claims that it is the foundation of the whole health care bill, even though it is threatening the constitutionality—and very survival—of their scheme to vastly expand government oversight and control of the health care system.

Republicans, on the other hand, are adamant about getting rid of the mandate. But in a policy reversal, some of them now claim they want to keep the guaranteed issue provision against pre-existing conditions—which opens the door to higher health insurance premiums, just as we saw in those eight states that passed guaranteed issue in the 1990s.

In partisan politics there are no good or bad policies, only ours and theirs.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 2, 2011 8:03 PM