General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Every American citizen is now required to help make insurance corporations richer. Enjoy! [View all]Leopolds Ghost
(12,875 posts)Romneycare was written by the corporations, and when Clinton, Edwards, and Daschle sat down with senior Republicans, they were going on the basis that it was the sort of Insurance-industry wanted in the 90s. Gingrich was the first person to float the idea of compelling Americans to purchase private insurance, I believe. The way Washington Monthly described it (and this was years before the bill became a hot potato) the central aim was to increase the pool of insured paying into the for-profit system, eliminating "deadbeats" and to forestall any push for single payer, which the authors of the bill opposed. The idea of the public option was to provide a "safety valve" that was self-limited (i.e. insurance would not go for the deal if the public option was not funded by the fines themselves, in such a fashion that the fines drove most users to private insurance and the public option was limited to paying for those in a specific narrow eligibility gap where availability was driven by the people paying fines. Like using highway speeding tickets to pay for mass transit, in essence. That is how Washington Monthly's extensive coverage described it back when I learned about the bill in 2006 or so and that is when I came to loathe it. It is no better than one of the numerous private business carrot and stick policies that are used when they have a captive market, an unregulated utility.
Anyone who thinks this bill would have passed Congress or SCOTUS if Insuricare opposed it is being naive.
Insuricare and the Corporatocracy in the Republican Party (and a few conservative Dems) =/= Tea Party.