EzraKlein Archive | OBAMA'S HEALTH CARE PLAN EXPECTS AN INDIVIDUAL MANDATE.

EzraKlein Archive The American Prospect:

"Administration officials have been very clear on what the inclusion of 'universality' is meant to communicate to Congress. As one senior member of the health team said to me, '[The plan] will cover everybody. And I don't see how you cover everybody without an individual mandate.' That language almost precisely echoes what Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus said in an interview last summer. 'I don’t see how you can get meaningful universal coverage without a mandate,' he told me. Last fall, he included an individual mandate in the first draft of his health care plan.

"The administration's strategy brings them into alignment with senators like Max Baucus. Though they're not proposing an individual mandate in the budget, they are asking Congress to fulfill an objective that they expect will result in Congress proposing an individual mandate. And despite the controversy over the individual mandate in the campaign, they will support it. That, after all, is how you cover everybody."


While I favor a single payer system as the best solution, it doesn't take a rocket scientist (or Ezra Klein) to see where the winds are blowing.

I have become comfortable with this approach. Although mandates have not worked out as well as we'd like in Massachusetts, it is hard to argue that they have not worked in Switzerland, Germany, Japan and other countries. I would argue that the chief differences are two:
1.) Spending enough money to actually give everyone a comprehensive benefits package (think Medicare, not Medicaid)
2.) Serious regulation of private insurers so that they cannot cherry-pick, deny, drop, obfuscate, etc

If we spend enough money in some private-public mix and if we regulate the insurers so they function more like the contractors who cut the checks for Medicare (the regional "carriers") and we subsidize those who cannot afford health care or insurance, we may not have single payer, but we will at least have a truly universal, fair, system.

AND THEN, if we still think we need to, we can work on transitioning to a true single payer system.

OK, let me have it.

Cheers,

Sphere: Related Content