A summary of the conservatives giving birth to the health care mandate

I came across an October 2011 blog by Avik Roy of Forbes in which he clearly
lays out the birth of the health care individual mandate, as created by Stuart
Butler and Edmund Haislmaier of the conservative Heritage Foundation. They put forward the idea in 1989
and promoted it throughout the early 1990s.

At the time, they cited the need for “quality, affordable health care” for
all. Of course, now that Barack Obama is in the White House, the folks at Heritage
have changed their tune.

“We would include a mandate in our proposal — not a mandate on employers,
but a mandate on heads of households — to obtain at least a basic package of
health insurance for themselves and their families. That would have to include,
by federal law, a catastrophic provision in the form of a stop loss for a
family’s total health outlays. It would have to include all members of the
family, and it might also include certain very specific services, such as
preventive care, well-baby visits, and other items.”

Roy also
refers to another conservative writer, Peter Suderman, who decries the
Republican Party’s habit of reacting to Democratic proposals on health care rather
than producing a GOP plan.

Suderman wrote: “The individual mandate was an attempt to beat Democrats at
the universal coverage game and preempt … what would become HillaryCare.
Medicare’s prescription drug benefit was passed by a Republican president and a
Republican Congress under the pretense that if they didn’t do it, Democrats
would, and it would be worse. In the debate over Obamacare, Republicans spent
more energy arguing against the law’s Medicare payment cuts than any other part
of the law.”

You can read Roy’s
entire blog, which relies heavily on a Wall Street Journal report, here.