Individual mandates are the key to big business plans to destroy Social Security and Medicare

[Better Believe It]

Individual Mandates and Unraveling the Great Society
By: Jon Walker
March 29, 2012

If Conservatives get their way and the Supreme Court strikes down the individual mandate to buy health insurance, it would be a real victory for them; but in the end, the last laugh may be with actual progressives. While in this case an individual mandate was used to expand health coverage, similar individual mandates are the cornerstone for corporatist plans to unravel the public social insurance systems created by the New Deal/Great Society.

•The way to destroy the Social Security retirement insurance program, it is to eliminate the universal public program and replace it with an individual mandate to buy only private retirement accounts. You can also eliminate Social Security’s public disability program by creating an individual mandate requiring everyone to buy subsidized private disability insurance.
•The way to destroy Medicare as we known it is to basically replace the Medicare’ single payer system with ObamaCare for everyone over 65. For all participial purposes this is effectively what Paul Ryan’s original plan to destroy Medicare was.
•You can replace our current unemployment insurance system with an individual mandate requiring everyone to buy only subsidized private unemployment insurance.

If the Supreme Court rules against this individual mandate in a way that basically makes it legally impossible to replace most of our current public insurance systems with mandated private systems, that should be seen as a big silver lining for progressives.

Read the full article at:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2012/03/29/individual-mandates-and-unraveling-the-great-society/

[SidDithers]

1. Jon Walker. LOL...nt

Sid

[ProSense]

2. This is

"Individual Mandates and Unraveling the Great Society "

...a very bizarre argument. I mean, why conflate the mandate with the Republican plan to destroy Social Security?

Does anyone really want Republicans arguing that a mandate is unconstitutional? Medicare, Medicaid (CHIP) and Social Security rely on a mandate. What's to stop Republican from arguing that Medicaid in unconstitutional? They would likely argue that a mandate associated with single payer is unconstitutional.

Robert Reich:

<...>

The President and the Democrats could have avoided this dilemma in the first place if they’d insisted on Medicare for all, or at least a public option.

After all, Social Security and Medicare require every working American to “buy” them. The purchase happens automatically in the form of a deduction from everyone’s paychecks. But because Social Security and Medicare are government programs financed by payroll taxes they don’t feel like mandatory purchases.

Americans don’t mind mandates in the form of payroll taxes for Social Security or Medicare. In fact, both programs are so popular even conservative Republicans were heard to shout “don’t take away my Medicare!” at rallies opposed to the new health care law.

There’s no question payroll taxes are constitutional, because there’s no doubt that the federal government can tax people in order to finance particular public benefits. But requiring citizens to buy something from a private company is different because private companies aren’t directly accountable to the public. They’re accountable to their owners and their purpose is to maximize profits. What if they monopolize the market and charge humongous premiums? (Some already seem to be doing this.)

- more -

http://robertreich.org/post/19972321637

[DJ13]

3. Medicare, Medicaid (CHIP) and Social Security rely on a mandate.

No, those rely on taxes, not mandates.

If Obama and Congress had passed HCR with a tax that paid for the insurance they want citizens to have instead of a requirement to buy insurance as an individual, the USSC wouldnt have any way to object.

The article has a valid point, the conservatives would love to mandate individuals to buy a private investment portfolio to replace SS, and the mandate in the ACA is the crack in that door if its upheld.

[ProSense]

4. Newsflash

they're mandated and paid via the tax system.

Medicaid is funded by the federal and state governments and CHIP is mandated.

[DJ13]

5. Newsflash

Taxes are not mandates.

Everyone pays the same amount in taxes per dollar made up to the cap, and recieves the same amount per dollar earned in benefits in the future.

The amount you pay directly to a private insurer under a mandate will be a totally different amount than your neighbor will pay, no matter their income.

If Obama had used a tax structure to pay for citizens insurance instead of a private mandate we would have had significant leverage to keep costs low.

The every man for himself mandate loses that leverage, so theres no restraint on healthcare costs going forward.

[ProSense]

6. Explain

Everyone pays the same amount in taxes per dollar made up to the cap, and recieves the same amount per dollar earned in benefits in the future.

...how this applies to Medicaid and CHIP.

[DJ13]

7. Those both are paid for by taxes

You dont have to buy into Medicaid or CHIP by paying a private company for coverage.

Look, if you cant understand the difference (or refuse to for party reasons) thats not my problem.

Honestly, what would have been so bad about using the existing tax structure to fund HCR?

[ProSense]

10. They

"Those both are paid for by taxes"

...are funded by federal and state government, but they are not funded by a specific tax. People pay varying amounts, and until the health care law, only those with children qualified for Medicaid.

This is like arguing that a public option would have made the mandate constitutional or acceptable. The public option is not single payer.

[TheKentuckian]

13. No, the Public Option would not have fixed the mandate problem, that is correct.

Which would indicate you actually understand the difference between a mandate to enter a private, for profit contract and taxes.

It would be nice for people to stop pretending that paying taxes and the government pay troops is the same as making you go hire a mercenary.

[ProSense]

15. What would be

No, the Public Option would not have fixed the mandate problem, that is correct.

Which would indicate you actually understand the difference between a mandate to enter a private, for profit contract and taxes.

It would be nice for people to stop pretending that paying taxes and the government pay troops is the same as making you go hire a mercenary.

...is if people stop pretending that the health care law is the first such mandate. As I said, Medicaid and CHIP are mandated.

[DJ13]

14. ..are funded by federal and state government, but they are not funded by a specific tax.

No, but they are paid for by taxes.

Just as the DoD isnt paif for by a specific tax, they are paid for by a tax thats jointly shared by taxpayers.

They also have a feature missing from the mandate........ you arent directly responsible to buy a product offered by a non government entity.

The PO was different, as it would have established the needed government layer between your (tax) money and the product of a private company, which would have provided the necessary restraint on price increases sorely lacking when you just tell people they have to directly buy insurance as an individual.

[DonCoquixote]

9. exactly the point

Sadly, many on the "single payer immediately or nothing crowd" have realized that they have been played like a fiddle, and that when ACA dies, in no small thanks to them, it will be sued to strike down paying for just about anything that is not a gun or corporate welfare.

[girl gone mad]

18. The individual insurance mandate was born in the dark chambers..

of quasi-libertarian neoconservative think tanks on a mission to do precisely that.

Back then, Democrats argued that it was unconstitutional. That's how far to the right we've moved in less than 20 years.

[Uncle Joe]

8. I agree a mandate to purchase private for profit "health" insurance can be seen as precedent

for the doing the same with Social Security funds.

Instead of going toward government treasuries, those funds can go in to Wall Street's good hands.

Thanks for the thread, Better Believe It.

[kenny blankenship]

17. Same scumbags who thought up the Individual Mandate

ALSO envision "Personal Retirement Accounts" taking over Social Security
http:www.heritage.org/issues/retirement-security/social-security/social-security-reform/personal-retirement-account
WARNING: The above link takes you to FAR RIGHTWING Heritage Foundation, where the Individual Mandate was conceived.

And they also plan for Medicare to be replaced with "Health Savings Accounts."

That will be NEXT, if they can get this one over on you. In a couple of years they will start trying to expand this uber-privatized model from basic health insurance to pensions and senior health care.

When Democrats start to dabble with "conservative means towards liberal ends" they get hooked on corporate cash and wind up enacting the Republican's hard-right social de-engineering agenda for them. The little people end up enslaved, broke and dead.

[madrchsod]

11. plan A is free and plan B cost me around 80 dollars

my sup plan is around 25-30 a month.

[FarLeftFist]

12. It's becoming Prison Planet over at FDL with the conspiracy theories.

[eridani]

16. ACA is already being proposed as an excuse to cancel Medicare

http://www.pressherald.com/news/GOP-Medicare-plan-borrows-from-and-repeals-Obamas.html

But if Obama is re-elected and his health care law is upheld by the Supreme Court, Wyden sees Medicare exchanges and a premium support system as the basis for a deal to reduce health care costs. He said Democrats would be hard pressed to argue against the idea if it is working for people under 65 as a result of the health care overhaul.