"Never before have so few with so much promised to take away so much from so many and then laugh their asses off as the so many with so little vote for the so few with so much." A James Pence Quote
"American Politics, a sport for the rich and enslavement for the rest of us." A James Pence Quote
One of the burning questions in the debate on Universal Healthcare is whether the Congress has the right to impose a mandate on the American public to buy health insurance. The argument is that without a mandate to grow the risk pool as large as possible, costs cannot come down. The White House today weighed in and said that Congress indeed could force mandates on the American people to buy insurance.
Robert Gibbs said that indeed, a mandate upon the American people is Constitutional:
Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said Wednesday that those who say that the so-called individual mandate in the health-care bills being considered by Congress is unconstitutional have little grounds for saying so.
"I don't believe there's a lot of case law that would demonstrate the veracity of what they're commentating on," Mr. Gibbs said in answer to a question at the daily briefing.
While I am no Constitutional lawyer I will say this. The White House has been a huge disappointment in pressing for this mandate while considering the public option expendable. If I remember during the primary when I supported another candidate one thing that then candidate Obama and his supporters constantly pounded home to many of us was that Obama did not believe in mandated coverage while he would fight for a public option. Somewhere in the shuffle those two points got reversed.
I will make one thing perfectly clear. Mandated coverage with the weak, watered down public option that the Congress is talking about, a public option that the White House refused to push in a more Progressive direction for whatever reason is a very bad idea.
Even more disheartening is that it appears as if the Congressional Progressive and Black caucuses, the hope of Americans everywhere that if we were mandated to buy coverage we would have an affordable, robust public option to help do so are now on board with the watered down reforms that Congress has settled upon.
I will say also that the leadership shown by this White House in fighting for real Progressive change in our healthcare system has been lackluster at best. I would also like to say that I disagree with them in one regard. If the Congress and this White House refuses to give the American people a robust public option to protect them from the insurance companies they will give a huge windfall mandate to then they do not have the right to force us to deal with those insurance companies at whose mercy millions of new people will now be thrown to.
If our Congress and White House throws us under the bus with a mandate without protecting us with a robust public option to keep the insurance companies honest, then I consider them as no better than those insurance companies themselves and will stay at home next year and in 2012 if no viable Progressive third party candidate comes forward.
Before even considering Constitutionality, I think we all like Dennis Kucinich should ask, is this the best we can do??
