The long history of mandate repeal
by digby
Hmmm:
In 1993, Washington also passed a law both guaranteeing all residents access to private health insurance, regardless of their health status, and requiring Washingtonians to purchase coverage.
The state legislature, however, repealed that last provision two years later. With the guaranteed access provisions still standing, the state saw premiums rise and enrollment drop, as residents only purchased coverage when they needed it. Health insurers fled the state and, by 1999, it was impossible to buy an individual plan in Washington — no company was selling.
That article in the Washington Post recounts several stories from around the country in which states attempted to impose a health insurance mandate which Republicans repealed upon taking office. All the plans fell apart for reasons similar to those outlines above.
Can someone explain to me why anyone thought the Republicans wouldn't do the same thing on a national level? Now, it may very well turn out that the Supreme Court will strike down the mandate as unconstitutional, which will pretty much end this particular approach altogether. But even if they uphold its constitutionality, what's to stop the next Republican majority and president from repealing it? (Hell, the way things work currently, it won't even take a Republican majority.)
I guess I've just never understood why there was such ecstatic optimism about a plan that was so dependent on several moving parts being left undisturbed by the enemies of national health care. I always thought the mandate was vulnerable, but the medicaid expansion is even more vulnerable. These examples of what happened in the states were out there, so it can't come as any surprise, can it?
Not that there was anything that wouldn't have been vulnerable to repeal by wingnuts. But I have to believe that allowing people to buy into an already existing program like Medicare --- which had a strong and longstanding constituency --- would have made that less likely. But hey, it's spilled milk. Here's hoping that at the end of the day enough of this health care reform takes hold that some substantial number of people's lives will have been improved by it. That's not nothing.
.