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MANDATES! The subject's now health care, and Obama spoke explicitly in defense of his plan's lack of an individual mandate element to it. This was discussed quite a bit on the site last week, and in fact we'll have another piece on the subject published tomorrow. (As you might have guessed, TAP Online's recent emphasis on individual health insurance mandates is indeed part of a conscious strategy to boost the sexiness and broad appeal of the site.) Obama and Edwards had a fairly substantive exchange on the issue, and then two others made helpful contributions: Clinton made a welcome reaffirmation that her role in the 1993 health-care bid will not hinder her interest in pushing for a universal plan if she were elected (whether she's the person best positioned to make that case, given the history, is a different question); then, Kucinich said this whole mandate issue is beside the point and everyone's ignoring the fact that single-payer is obviously the best answer.
UPDATE: Clinton's targeting of the insurance and pharma lobbies in her discussion of the political dynamics of this issue deserves particular praise here.
--Sam Rosenfeld
COMMENTS (2)
Obama made a point on health care that had not occurred to me, but now seems unassailable. A "mandate" that everyone buy health insurance is a legalism. It does not in fact mean that everyone will be covered. And Econ 101 says that people will not buy health insurance if they can't afford it, even if the law says so.
And Barack was right that, in Calif, people don't buy auto insurance, though it is mandated.
If you throw criminal sanctions on the mandate, maybe some will buy insurance they can't really afford, but do we want the equivalent of debtor's prisons?
Posted by: fred723 | June 3, 2007 11:02 PM
The point about mandates is actually rather important, as I see it. The idea that you cover some people to start and the rest later is not a good approach. Get it right the first time. A universal plan needs to cover everybody. Otherwise it's not universal.
One concern I have with the health proposals is that they plan to make insurance more affordable for people. A move in the right direction, but that's not the same as giving people health coverage. As fred noted, you will never get coverage affordable enough for some people and many people won't pay for it whether you make it mandatory or not.
If these pols are planning to find $100B in savings and rescind the Bush tax cuts to pay for the plan, why not go the rest of the way and eliminate the insurance premium.
I'll admit I haven't read up on the health care proposals much yet and I'm not familiar with all the details. But I think forcing people to write a check to their health plan every month is not a good idea.
Posted by: JJF | June 4, 2007 1:53 AM