History of the Individual Insurance Mandate, 1989-2010

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Heritage Foundation's 1989 report is considered to be the conceptual origin of the health insurance mandate.

The concept of the individual health insurance mandate is considered to have originated in 1989 at the conservative Heritage Foundation. In 1993, Republicans twice introduced health care bills that contained an individual health insurance mandate. Advocates for those bills included prominent Republicans who today oppose the mandate including Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Charles Grassley (R-IA), Robert Bennett (R-UT), and Christopher Bond (R-MO). In 2007, Democrats and Republicans introduced a bi-partisan bill containing the mandate.

In 2008, then presidential candidate Barack Obama was opposed to the individual mandate. He stated the following in a Feb. 28, 2008 interview on the Ellen DeGeneres show about his divergent views with Hillary Clinton:

"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."

By 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), sometimes referred to as "Obamacare,” had passed in both the House and the Senate with no Republican votes. On Mar. 23, 2010 President Obama signed the act containing an individual mandate into law. On Jan. 5, 2011, Republicans in the US House of Representatives introduced The Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act (HR 2) to repeal the PPACA. One of their main arguments for repeal was that the health insurance mandate was unconstitutional.

http://healthcarereform.procon.org

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

So vote Republican Steven. Healthcare insurance rates are up 30% since Obamacare

Obamacare is dead. SCOTUS will kill it in June. I've got June 20th in the Obamacare "death pool" Do you want to buy a square? It was poorly crafted legislation with no alternative "fuel" so to speak. Even if the law stands without the individual mandate (which WILL be struck down) it cannot be implemented without a funding source, there is no other funding source in the bill. That means a new bill which must originat in the House of Represetatives because it requires funding, and the Republicans now control the House. Good luck.

Obama had two years of a rubber stamp congress, no chance for even a Republican filibuster, no need for even ONE Republican vote and he couldn't do it! He could not do it because DEMOCRATS messed it up.

There is no duty upon the Supreme Court to provide healthcare, not their job. Their only duty is to make sure the laws passed by congress are constitutional. Obamacare is not.

Edited April 4, 2012 by Gary and Alla