Delaware Liberal

About those Individual Mandates

Scott P makes an analogy I have not noticed before, and he is partly right:

Let’s suppose that instead of health insurance, the government mandated that everyone pay for a retirement account. If they were to show ideologically consistency (which is by no means required, or even desired, by today’s GOP), conservatives would be sharply opposed to this measure. However, I don’t hear many Republicans calling for a repeal of, or constitutional challenge to, Social Security. Now, I don’t doubt that many conservatives would love to do away with Social Security, but deep down their main issue is that it takes money from people who support and vote for them, and gives it to people who don’t — not that the big, bad government makes them take part. But again, the program would not work if people were able to pay in on a voluntary basis. Why would a 25 year old pay into a program that they won’t see any money from for 40 years? But without everyone paying in, the program doesn’t work.

Actually, I think your standard big business rich Republican hates Social Security because they hate the poor, and believe in that ridiculous addage that everyone must pick up themselves by their own straps. As Colin Powell once famously said “What if they do not have boot straps?” But I digress.

Where the analogy fails is that Social Security is a public government system. The analogy would be fine if we have public option insurance (a medicare for all) plan available. But right now we do not. Currently, the individual mandates would require us to buy private insurance. I digress one more time to note that while the public option may not pass with the HCR bill now, it will eventually within the next five years as it is popular, it will drive down costs, and idiot Senators will probably need to see the reform plan in action without the public option for a year or two to see that it is needed.

The true analogy that really exposes GOP hyprocrisy on the Individual Mandate is that the GOP’s own Social Security Reform plan back in 2005 would have required we all buy private retirement plans that invest in the stock market. So obviously they have no problem, constitutional or otherwise, with an individual mandate. They just have a problem with a Democrat in the White House.

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