Pres. Obama Arguing against Mandates:

[amborin]

"...... What’s meant by a mandate is that the government is forcing people to buy health insurance and so she’s suggesting a parent is not going to buy health insurance for themselves if they can afford it. Now, my belief is that most parents will choose to get health care for themselves and we make it affordable.

Here’s the concern. If you haven’t made it affordable, how are you going to enforce a mandate. I mean, if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house. The reason they don’t buy a house is they don’t have the money. And so, our focus has been on reducing costs, making it available. I am confident if people have a chance to buy high-quality health care that is affordable, they will do so. That’s what our plan does and nobody disputes that.

The problem that people resisting the mandate seem to be having is that the health care offered through the Senate bill is not completely affordable, particularly to those in the middle class, and more important, it’s not of high quality. As Ian Welsh notes today, the Senate bill does not have annual caps for insurance companies and has on the aggregate a 70% actuarial value, and even lower for certain key groups. Welsh notes, “100 billion in subsidies doesn’t mean squat if they come tied to an expense people can’t afford, making them buy insurance which is not particularly useful.”"

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video:

<http://news.firedoglake.com/2009/12/17/video-of-obama-making-the-case-against-mandates/>