But let's all remember... when it comes to the individual mandate: The 1989 Heritage plan begat the Republican health care counter-proposal to Hillarycare, then that Republican health care plan begat Romneycare, then Romneycare begat Obamacare. Republicans from 2010-2011 in a fit of lunacy believed Obamacare=socialism. But now Republicans are counter-proposing against Obamacare... by likely nominating the man who supported Romneycare. So.. with Romneycare once again as part of the proposals of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party will have to come up with a counter-proposal. And this in all likelihood will be a universal health care plan, aka Hillarycare 2.0.
So we've come full circle.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/conservative-origins-of-obamacare/"The essence of Obamacare, as of Romneycare, is a three-legged stool of regulation and subsidies: community rating requiring insurers to make the same policies available to everyone regardless of health status; an individual mandate, requiring everyone to purchase insurance, so that healthy people don’t opt out; and subsidies to keep insurance affordable for those with lower incomes.
The original Heritage plan from 1989 had all these features.
These days, Heritage strives mightily to deny the obvious; it picks at essentially minor differences between what it used to advocate and the plan Democrats actually passed, and tries to make them seem like a big deal. But this is disinformation. The essential features of the ACA — above all, the mandate — are ideas Republicans used to support."
This was fascinating, "History of the Individual Health Insurance Mandate, 1989-2010
Republican Origins of Democratic Health Care Provision":
http://healthcarereform.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=004182
