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From: IMJ on 9 Mar 2010 23:43


It's amazing how easily the Cons' forget their own history... and sad
how low they'll stoop, to kill healthcare reform. These jackasses are
now BLASTING many of the SAME things THEY used to champion as a part of
their own healthcare reform plan!!!

This was when there was still some rational moderate voices 'allowed' in
their ranks; before they got 'Roverized', 'Bushwacked', Cheneyed upside
the head & finally 'Teabagged' into an intellectually dishonest gang of
"anything goes" clowns!

Not only is it the epitome' of hypocrisy and dishonesty, what does it
say about how they view their constituents, who are ranting like
banshees at the thought of individual mandates to buy insurance -
seemingly oblivious to the fact that this was a Republican proposal not
long ago?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Republicans Spurn Once-Favored Health Mandate

By Julie Rovner


For Republicans, the idea of requiring every American to have health
insurance is one of the most abhorrent provisions of the Democrats'
health overhaul bills.

"Congress has never crossed the line between regulating what people
choose to do and ordering them to do it," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT).
"The difference between regulating and requiring is liberty."

But Hatch's opposition is ironic, or some would say, politically
motivated. The last time Congress debated a health overhaul, when Bill
Clinton was president, Hatch and several other senators who now oppose
the so-called individual mandate actually supported a bill that would
have required it.

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."


The 'Free-Rider Effect'


Pauly, a conservative health economist at the University of
Pennsylvania's Wharton School, says it wasn't just his idea. Back in the
late 1980s - when Democrats were pushing not just a requirement for
employers to provide insurance, but also the possibility of a
government-sponsored single-payer system - a group of economists and
health policy people, market-oriented, sat down and said, 'Let's see if
we can come up with a health reform proposal that would preserve a role
for markets but would also achieve universal coverage.' "

The idea of the individual mandate was about the only logical way to get
there, Pauly says. That's because even with the most generous subsidies
or enticements, "there would always be some Evel Knievels of health
insurance, who would decline coverage even if the subsidies were very
generous, and even if they could afford it, quote unquote, so if you
really wanted to close the gap, that's the step you'd have to take."

One reason the individual mandate appealed to conservatives is because
it called for individual responsibility to address what economists call
the "free-rider effect." That's the fact that if a person is in an
accident or comes down with a dread disease, that person is going to get
medical care, and someone is going to pay for it.

"We called this responsible national health insurance," says Pauly.
"There was a kind of an ethical and moral support for the notion that
people shouldn't be allowed to free-ride on the charity of fellow
citizens."


Republican, Democratic Bills Strikingly Similar


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 GOP's 1993 measure included some features Republicans still want
Democrats to consider, including damage award caps for medical
malpractice lawsuits. But the summary of the Republican bill from the
Clinton era and the Democratic bills that passed the House and Senate
over the past few months are startlingly alike.

Beyond the requirement that everyone have insurance, both call for
purchasing pools and standardized insurance plans. Both call for a ban
on insurers denying coverage or raising premiums because a person has
been sick in the past. Both even call for increased federal research
into the effectiveness of medical treatments - something else that used
to have strong bipartisan support, but that Republicans have been
backing away from recently.


'A Sad Testament'


Nichols, of the New America Foundation, says he's depressed that so many
issues that used to be part of the Republican health agenda are now
being rejected by Republican leaders and most of the rank and file. "I
think it's a sad testament to the state of relations among the parties
that they've gotten to this point," he said. And how does economist
Pauly feel about the GOP's retreat from the individual mandate they used
to promote? "That's not something that makes me particularly happy," he
says.

````

P.S. I wonder if Sarah Palin actually knows that her party USED TO be
FOR such things as individual mandates, purchasing pools and
effectiveness research, before they were against it???

From: IMJ on 10 Mar 2010 17:31
ttt

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