Former DNC Chairman Howard Dean has never been a fan of the individual mandate for insurance coverage, both on policy and political grounds. And once Senate negotiators removed any hope of a public option for insurance coverage from the final health care reform package, he became much more outspoken in his criticism. The logic, simply put, was that there were other avenues for providing health care coverage to large swaths of the population without forcing them to sign up with private insurers. Dean would know -- he expanded health care coverage for kids without an individual mandate while serving as governor of Vermont. Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/06/dean-individual-mandate-w_n_673218.html
I always have been under the belief that the individual mandate is unconstitutional. While Congress will argue the "commerce" clause gives them the authority to do this, the only way they can argue the "commerce" clause to have citizens engaged in commerce. If citizens don't have health insurance they aren't engaging in commerce. It is inconceivable to me that the Democratic majority would try to force the American people into "commerce" so they can regulate them. I hope and pray the Roberts court will overturn the health care bill as unconstitutional and I think they will under a 5-4 decision. What is more interesting is where Kagan stands on this. If she provided guidance to Obama adminstration on potential legal challenges to this; she has a moral obligation to recuse herself from the what is to be certain Supreme Court case.
Don't kid yourself. The Democrats hate the individual mandate. Because if you have no mandate yet require insurance companies to cover anyone at any time with no limits to the care they receive, it's the expressway to insurance company bankruptcy. And when there is no more private health insurance, guess who will HAVE to be there to pick up the pieces? And that, my friends, is the back door to single-payer, which is what the Left has always wanted. These machinations are necessary because the American people would never vote for a single-payer system.
