Wednesday, June 27, 2012

All the President’s Mandate Positions  

I have a new column up at National Review Online on Obama’s history of flip-flops on the individual mandate:

Without the mandate, the Obama plan would not be considered a “universal coverage” plan in Democratic circles, as analysts, including those at the Congressional Budget Office, would expect large numbers of Americans to decline to sign up for coverage in a voluntary system. Party elites and activists would regard this as a major, perhaps even fatal, flaw. Nothing in the Democratic catechism is more sacred than the goal of “universal coverage” in health care.

So Senator Obama was taking a risk in not toeing the party line. But it was a calculated risk. He knew from polling data that, despite its popularity among party elites and left-leaning health-care analysts, the individual mandate was far less popular among Democratic primary voters. Here was a policy difference with Senator Clinton that he could exploit to his advantage in the primaries.

You can read the rest of the article here.

posted by James C. Capretta | 3:00 pm
Tags: individual mandate
File As: Health Care