This is President, then candidate, Barack Obama in 2008 answering a question on the Ellen Degeneres show about the health insurance mandate included in then-Presidentical candidate and Obama rival Hillary Clinton’s health care plan:
She’s have the government force every individual to buy insurance, and I don’t have such a mandate because I don’t think the problem is that people don’t want health insurance. It’s that they can’t afford it …
Well, if things were that easy, I could mandate everybody buy a house, and that, you know, and that would solve, you know, the problem of homelessness. It doesn’t.
Ed Morrissey notes that this wasn’t the only time Obama spoke out against an insurance mandate:
OBAMA: Let’s break down what she really means by a mandate. 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.
If only Obama had followed his own advice.
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