Ezra Klein reports that senior administration officials are telling him their budget will assume the existence of a “mandate” as part of a health care reform package. Since nobody except the voters ever agreed with Obama about this, it’s being greeted with all around cheer. But I still think Obama was right in the first place. It’s not that a mandate is such a terrible thing, but it’s primary purpose is to keep insurance companies in business once progressive stuff like community rating and guaranteed issue policies are put in place. If I were in congress, I’d write a bill that has community rating and guaranteed issue. Let the insurance companies fight for the mandate! Make them deliver some votes for a “compromise” featuring all three. But there’s no particular reason that this favor to insurance firms should be defined as constitutive of the progressive health care agenda.
But whatever; this debate was never especially important.
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