Came across this NPR article while digging around on some related stuff. And then a little additional background from Think Progress. Thought it was interesting. The article is not very long and worth reading in its entirety. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123670612 And here’s the Think Progress thing. As NPR reported, Orin Hatch, for one, was for it before he was against it. http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/03/26/88989/hatch-mandate/
There is no doubt in my mind that, in order for the government to be able to be able to insure the people who either can't afford insurance (who tend to be less healthy to begin with) or the people who would be otherwise un-insurable (like do to existing serious health issues), you have to have an individual mandate. You have to be able to force people - like the healthier people who might not get insurance or might not get much insurance and the wealthier people who can afford not to have insurance to all - to get insurance. That is the only way insurance works. Otherwise the cost to the government (and really everyone else with insurance) for taking on those less healthy or less wealthy people would go through the roof. As far as for they were for it before they were against it....these are not your father's political parties. Things that would have been unthinkable are now taken for granted. And vice versa. Sometimes that is good. Sometimes not.
On the surface this looks incredibly bad for the leaders of the Republican party, and it is, but...I'd tend to agree with Orin Hatch's explanation, that the Republican's idea was formed to provide an alternative to Hillary's idea. Once their constituents made it clear they opposed the idea, the Republican leadership dropped it.
I think Hatch's explanation was a little lame. But that aside, there are two points that struck me. One is that the Republican leadership was on board with the concept of a comprehensive health insurance system. The other, of course, is that they were the ones who came up with the idea of a mandate as the only way to make their plan work. It's also interesting that the opinion among powerful elements within the Republican party and leadership that we needed a system of health insurance that would cover all or most citizens and that the government would need to be involved in it apparently dates back at least to the Socialist Republican Nixon, who came up with and pushed hard for a plan very similar to what we got from Obama.
Both points are valid. I just think that, at the time, the Republican party was less interested in the specifics of their own plan (and the resulting outcome) then in out-manuvering the Democrats... that they were trying to make the public perceive them as more competant than the Democrats. Once their constituents made it clear they were opposed to the idea of universal coverage, the Republican leadership did a 180.
