So while President Clinton was pushing for employers to cover their workers in his 1993 bill, John Chafee of Rhode Island, along with 20 other GOP senators and Rep. Bill Thomas of California, introduced legislation that instead featured an individual mandate. Four of those Republican co-sponsors — Hatch, Charles Grassley of Iowa, Robert Bennett of Utah and Christopher Bond of Missouri — remain in the Senate today.
“The individual mandate, in our eyes, is clearly unconstitutional,” explained Hatch to FNC anchor Greta Van Susteren. “If Congress can do that to us, then there’s nothing that the government can’t do to us.”
Just so we’re clear:
In fact, says Len Nichols of the New America Foundation, the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea. “It was invented by Mark Pauly to give to George Bush Sr. back in the day, as a competition to the employer mandate focus of the Democrats at the time.”
Go Orinn!
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December 14, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Bob Doran
another legal opinion: http://tinyurl.com/25bf5nu
Law prof Paul Campos figures the ruling overturning the individual mandate could be the death knell for the health insurance industry, given that other parts of the bill are widely considered constitutional.
As I read it, it could set up a system where the industry is forced to sell insurance to sick people in need of care, but without the advantage of the wider pool they were figuring on with the mandate.
December 14, 2010 at 5:14 pm
Eric Kirk
Wouldn’t break my heart. Obviously there would be enormous pressure to legislate the regs away, or… institute a public option to take up the slack. But that would require more Democrats willing to fight.
I do remember an article sometime in the recent past, however, which said that the law lacked a severability clause, which means it’s possible that a court could strike the mandate AND the regs as part of a comprehensively statutory scheme.
However, it’s probably moot as the consensus of legal experts say that the ruling is going to be overturned.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/12/amateur-hour-va-judge-makes-elementary-error-in-health-care-ruling.php?ref=fpb
The point is that Republicans scrambling to appease the nutcases on the right who are being churned up by talk radio and fox news and they’re abandoning their own ideas. McCain votes against his own immigration reform bill. Cap and Trade was their bright idea as an alternative to traditional regulation. They even oppose tax cuts now, if they would tend to stimulate the economy or render the tax system more progressive.
December 21, 2010 at 4:49 pm
START treaty looks like it’s passing « Sohum Parlance II
[...] to the fringe. That hasn’t stopped Republicans in the recent past however, as some are even willing to slam their own ideas to cater to the Fox News pumped [...]