Dept. of Irony: GOP Flip-Flop on the Individual Mandate in 2009 Could Cost Them the Presidency in 2012
In the video clip above from the Republican presidential debate at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, Calif., in June 2008, Mitt Romney defends the individual mandate as a right-wing solution to universal health care:
ROMNEY: [So we in Massachusetts] said: No more free riders. It was like bringing “workfare” to welfare. We said: If you can afford insurance, then either have the insurance or get a health savings account. Pay your own way, but no more free ride.
And that was what the mandate did. It said, you have got to come with either the insurance or a health savings account or the like.
I think it’s the conservative approach, to make sure that people who can afford care are getting it at their expense, not at the expense of the taxpayers and government. That I consider to be a step towards socialism.
Republicans were not only for the individual mandate before they were against it, they invented it in the 1990s. Now, of course, Romney’s enacting the mandate statewide when he was governor of Massachusetts is a contributing factor to his fading prospects in the 2012 campaign.