Ironic That Obama Is Faced With The Argument He Used Against Hillary’s Mandate

Once in a while, our cousins across the pond see things better than we do here, as in this article from the London (UK) Daily Mail.

Even more ironic is that the justices, or five of them at least, look like they might force President Barack Obama back to the drawing board partly on the basis of the argument one Senator Obama made against then Senator Hillary Clinton in 2008.

At issue today was the so-called ‘individual mandate” – the federal government’s act of compelling Americans to buy health insurance. It is the centrepiece of the Affordable Health Care Act – aka Obamacare – which is the signature achievement of Obama’s presidency thus far.

But back during the 2008 campaign, Obama argued strenuously against the individual mandate. In a debate in South Carolina, he said: “A mandate means that in some fashion, everybody will be forced to buy health insurance. … But I believe the problem is not that folks are trying to avoid getting health care. The problem is they can’t afford it. And that’s why my plan emphasises lowering costs.”

In February 2008, he said that you could no more solve the issue of the uninsured with an individual mandate than you could cure homelessness by ordering people to buy a home.

Harnden is right, as I said earlier today. There’s really very little justification for the individual mandate aside from a naked power grab on behalf of the federal government.

What might be even more ironic is that I agree with the 2008 version of Obama… if you make health insurance affordable, healthy people will sign up, which will help to balance out the people with serious health conditions. And the way to make it affordable, as I said way back in one of my earliest posts here, is to make it transparent.