Organizing for America | Posts with the tag mandates

Posts with the tag mandates

Agreed--Mandatory Insurance (for medical care) Is Unconstitutional

By hannah - Sep 28th, 2009 at 9:26 am EDT

The Constitutional lawyers are weighing in. Messrs Rivkin and Casey make a valid point. The federal government can't mandate individual behavior. Its role is to carry out the mandates that the Constitution and the Congress set and its obligation is to do so in compliance with the equal protection clause. Which is where, as I've argued before, the current Medicare program already falls down. Read More »

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Bedside manner

By gname - Apr 30th, 2008 at 4:43 am EDT

Also listed in: Californians for Obama | San Francisco for Obama | Writers for Obama

Despite appearances to the contrary, the recent vitriol between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama masks some genuine differences between the Democratic candidates.

One particularly important difference involves health care. The difference, however, is not so much one of policy. It is really a distinction of process.

On substantive grounds, their health plans are very similar. Both would maintain the employer-based system of private insurance while introducing a public insurance option for consumers. Both would place significant new regulations on private insurers, forbidding them from denying coverage or charging higher rates to those with "pre-existing conditions."

But there is one major distinction: Clinton's plan includes a governmental mandate that every individual has health coverage, and Obama's doesn't.

Clinton argues that without a mandate, healthy people will not buy insurance and will seek health care only when they get sick. This could raise costs for everyone else and threaten the viability of any reformed health care system. Obama argues that the problem is not that people don't want health coverage; it's that they cannot afford it.

Much of the rhetoric between the candidates has muddled the issue: Is the ultimate goal of health reform an individual mandate or expanded coverage? One is an intermediate step; the other is the policy objective itself. Indeed, Obama is not opposed to the concept of mandates; his plan includes one for children, and he has repeatedly said he would consider one for adults if needed. Mandates aren't the issue - universal coverage is.

Or is it? Some have suggested that Obama's plan would leave more people uninsured than Clinton's. As a result, Obama no longer describes his plan as "universal." Clinton, however, still does. This only adds to the confusion. "Mandating" is not "providing" - just because the government requires something does not make it so.

The only truly "universal" system would be a single-payer model, in which the government automatically insures everyone. Neither candidate currently advocates such a system, or anything else that is really "universal." Rightly or wrongly, both Clinton and Obama are champions of the "near-universal."

But assume that mandates really are indispensable. In a health system still dependent on private insurers (as both Clinton and Obama propose), the clearest beneficiaries of an individual mandate would be private insurers. The mandate represents a bargain: The government gets tighter regulation of the insurance industry, and private insurers receive millions of guaranteed new customers in return. Clinton's plan, with its explicit mandate, concedes this deal up front. Obama's plan, without a mandate, does not. He simply starts from a stronger negotiating position than Clinton.

The health care debate actually highlights a far more important distinction between Clinton and Obama, one that goes beyond differences in their policy objectives to whether either candidate could actually achieve them as president.

Throughout their careers, Clinton and Obama have earned and deliberately nurtured distinct political personas. Clinton is the policy wonk and political street fighter, a tough survivor who seems to enjoy the fight as much as the outcome. She spearheaded the failed attempt to reform health care in 1993-94 - an effort stymied by secrecy, complexity and an unwillingness to consider outside ideas.

Obama is the community organizer - more results-oriented than ideological, more likely to see potential allies than certain enemies, and equipped with a keen sense of power relationships and negotiating strategy. His political career has been marked by pragmatism and a commitment to make government more transparent and accountable.

Essentially, Clinton's persona is divisive, while Obama's is inclusive. This has been reflected on the campaign trail, where Clinton has relied upon a core of Democratic partisans and Obama has depended on a broader base of people new to politics. These coalitions will affect the performance of either candidate in the general election. But they also will determine each candidate's effectiveness as president, where good governance is nothing without principled, successful coalition building.

Indeed, the greatest difference between Clinton and Obama is not over policy, but over process. Clinton and Obama may share similar policy destinations, but they would take very different paths to get there.

Despite the heated campaigning of recent weeks, no one should doubt the core principles of either Clinton or Obama. Both candidates have demonstrated their commitment to meaningful health care reform. The question is who is more likely to produce results, on health care and other issues. On that basis alone, the distinction is clear.

(Originally published in the San Francisco Chronicle, 30 April 2008, and reposted by author here.)

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Insurance mandates

By Arizona Grandma - one of many! - Feb 18th, 2008 at 4:58 pm EST

Some facts about insurance mandates:

The Federal Government has NEVER required any citizen to purchase a product - with good reason. Such a federal mandate would be an unprecedented expansion of government power. What happens when insurance is mandated? Here are some facts…

In states where auto insurance is mandated compared to the states that do not mandate insurance, the percentage of uninsured drivers is essentially THE SAME. In California, where insurance is mandated for example, nearly 30% of drivers are uninsured. This percentage translates to 90 million Americans that would not comply with health insurance mandates.

In some states that mandate auto insurance, drivers are then required to carry uninsured motorists insurance to cover those that do not comply with the mandates. Will we then be forced to pay additional healthcare premiums to cover those that are uninsured?

Auto insurance is MORE costly in those states that have mandates. Why? Because the insurance companies know that they can charge more to those that are required by law to purchase their product. In states with no mandates, the insurance companies must keep costs down to lure or encourage drivers to purchase their product.

Hawaii is the only state that has mandated health care insurance. Yet, roughly 10% of Hawaiians remain uncovered. This translates to approximately 30 million Americans if mandated health insurance became law.

To the degree that health care and health insurance becomes less expensive, more low-income people can be brought into the system. That would be a better, more realistic and far less risky approach than individual mandates. Individual mandates are very costly to enforce, create more bureaucracy, lead to more and more mandates of particular procedures and benefits, and would lead to higher and higher costs.

Can we AFFORD mandated insurance? As someone who is self-employed, give me affordable, comprehensive coverage and I will RUSH to enroll. Give me expensive, bare-bones coverage and I will have no choice but to disregard the mandates. How then will my government enforce these mandates, and how much will that enforcement cost the taxpayers?

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Healthcare Concerns

By blamb - Feb 3rd, 2008 at 2:25 pm EST

another good article by Mr. Krugman:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/opinion/07krugman.html?_r=2&n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Op-Ed/Columnists/Paul%20Krugman&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Thinking past super Tuesday, what about mandates? This could prove troublesome in the R/D debates, I think.

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Lower health care costs the key to universal coverage

By Austan Goolsbee - Dec 21st, 2007 at 2:42 pm EST

Austan Goolsbee is a senior policy advisor to Senator Barack Obama.

A broad consensus has emerged on health care among Democrats in our country. We believe that universal, affordable health care is a right for every American.

The key words are universal and affordable.

There are some who say we can simply mandate coverage and everything will be right with the world and we won't have to do the hard work of making health care affordable.

Common sense tells us that this is just wrong. As does the experience in the few places that have tried mandates.

There is no sense in mandating something that people can't afford. In Massachusetts and California (the only places that have tried mandates), they had to leave a large fraction of the uninsured out because they knew the costs were too high for them. At the national level, a mandate would leave 15 to 20 million people uncovered until the costs came down.

In order to reach universal health care coverage in our country, we must start with making coverage more affordable. That has to happen before we require people to buy it, not after.

Anything less just won't cut it.

The Obama plan reduces costs for the average family by $2,500 and commits to delivering universal coverage. It is the gold standard.

No matter which Democratic candidate for president you support, though, you probably agree with the majority of experts, like Henry Aaron at the Brookings Institute and Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, who have said that all the major candidates' plans are ambitious, similar and any of them would finally at least put us on the path to universal health care in this country.

I agree with them, too. And I also believe, as the health experts do, that the key to solving our country's health care crisis is finding the person that can bring people together and actually get it done once elected.

The failure of health care in 1993 burned that lesson into our minds. The defeat of the Clinton plan set the cause of universal health care back by 15 years.

At the time, Democrats controlled both the presidency and the Congress - universal health care should have been doable.

But a secretive process, systematic attacks on alternative plans put forward by people who should have been allies, and an unwillingness to compromise with the major players in the industry played into the hands of the opponents of universal health care.

So it shocked me recently to hear some people attacking the Obama premise - of bringing people together to solve the problem - as "naive" and arguing that it should be abandoned in favor of outright partisan, polarized warfare: kick the other side out of the negotiations and then ram it down their throats.

Wow. After the 15 years of policy paralysis inflicted by that approach in 1993, I never expected to hear it again - especially from our Democratic friends.

The problem is, it just doesn't work.

Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, a great journalist as well as a historian of American politics, just wrote an article laying out the evidence proving that very thing.

He wrote that the really big changes in America - Social Security, Medicare, agriculture policy, labor rights - did not come about from a polarized, burn-them-at-the-stake style of warfare but rather through presidential leadership and building coalitions for change.

Let me be clear: Senator Obama's health care plan is as tough as any out there on the destructive practices of big drug and insurance companies that must to be ended - insurance companies refusing coverage because people are sick, drug companies charging Americans three times more than they charge Canadians and Europeans for the exact same medicine, and paying the makers of generics not to produce so they can maintain their profit margins.

Senator Obama's plan would fix these problems.

But does anyone really think that you could completely transform the health care system in America and reach universal health care without even talking to the companies currently working in the industry, the Republicans in Congress or any independent or Democrat that holds a slightly different view?

We tried that once. It didn't work. Let's learn from our mistakes, rather than doing the same old thing over and over again. Let's do it right.

Barack Obama will lead the way.

Sound off in the comments about what you think is the best approach to achieving universal health care. And check out Barack Obama's plan here:

http://barackobama.com/healthcare

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Health care quandaries

By Emma - Dec 16th, 2007 at 4:43 pm EST

Also listed in: 9 groups

I followed the link from Ann's post “The health insurance mandate” to the article “Mandate Overboard”. I read it and was, as usual, bewildered.

I really haven’t paid much attention to the issue of American health care since I find the American way so baffling and francly this article didn’t help any. I can’t for the life of me understand why American’s are so hostile towards tax funded health care! But I have accepted it as one of the many little quirks that makes the country so interesting. Reading this article, though, I can’t help but feel like Americans have gone mad!

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