Obama embraces wingnuttia, wingnuts revolt

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WASHINGTON – Republicans were for President Barack Obama's requirement that Americans get health insurance before they were against it.

The obligation in the new health care law is a Republican idea that's been around at least two decades. It was once trumpeted as an alternative to Bill and Hillary Clinton's failed health care overhaul in the 1990s. These days, Republicans call it government overreach.

Mitt Romney, weighing another run for the GOP presidential nomination, signed such a requirement into law at the state level as Massachusetts governor in 2006. At the time, Romney defended it as "a personal responsibility principle" and Massachusetts' newest GOP senator, Scott Brown, backed it.

...

Not long ago, many [conservatives] saw a national mandate as a free-market route to guarantee coverage for all Americans — the answer to liberal ambitions for a government-run entitlement like Medicare. Most experts agree some kind of requirement is needed in a reformed system because health insurance doesn't work if people can put off joining the risk pool until they get sick.

In the early 1970s, President Richard Nixon favored a mandate that employers provide insurance. In the 1990s, the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, embraced an individual requirement. Not anymore.

"The idea of an individual mandate as an alternative to single-payer was a Republican idea," said health economist Mark Pauly of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. In 1991, he published a paper that explained how a mandate could be combined with tax credits — two ideas that are now part of Obama's law. Pauly's paper was well-received — by the George H.W. Bush administration.

"It could have been the basis for a bipartisan compromise, but it wasn't," said Pauly. "Because the Democrats were in favor, the Republicans more or less had to be against it."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100327/ap_on_bi_ge/us_health_overhaul_requiring_insurance

[one...two...tree 2,762]

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

"Because the Democrats were in favor, the Republicans more or less had to be against it."

That right there sums it all up.

[luckytxn 2,264]

I remember when the Neocons were talking about this way back when. Just shows you that they are the same old thing.

[Dan T 8]

to me this story just shows that both major political parties, and government as a whole, despite claims to the contrary of serving the people are only there to serve themselves. So I ask why in the ?#@! would you want to give them any more power to run our lives into at their whim as this health care bill does?